How to modify the_excerpt

You cannot modify the_excerpt() in any way, unless you modify core wordpress functions, which I do not recommend.

Peter

I am passing the_excerpt_rss() as a Flash parameter on an external page (the loop is working fine), but my code will not work with the newline at the beginning. I have tried using str_replace(), trim(), ltrim() and it simply won’t remove the unwanted line break.

<?php
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('./blog/wp-blog-header.php');
?>

// code within swfobject
flashvars = {<?php $args1 = array('cat=1'); query_posts($args1);
$posts = get_posts('numberposts=1&cat=1');
foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
   permalink:"<?php the_permalink(); ?>",
   title:"<?php the_title(); ?>",
   excerpt:"<?= ltrim(the_excerpt_rss(),'\n,\r'); ?>"
<?php endforeach; ?>}

Outputs:

flashvars = {
   permalink:"http://marcysutton.com/blog/?p=1",
   title:"The next big thing.",
   excerpt:"
So this is my new blog. You may or may not have noticed it is connected to my photo gallery via the links below my logo: I wanted to make it easy to navigate around the backside of my website. Think of this collection as a reverse mullet — party in the front and business [...]"}

The line break after excerpt:" is causing an error in my javascript code. The flashvars work fine when I remove that variable, so I know that is causing the error. Any suggestions?

@brasofilo: It seems simple enough, I just need to somehow process the excerpt content before inserting it into my Javascript embed. I can successfully pull in the excerpt content via the_excerpt_rss() (no html tags), but I need to remove the line break to get it to work with SWFObject. Still looking for a solution.

great article, Peter, thanks for that

marcy,
i dealt with this problem in actionscript doing a search/replace so i could eliminate all line breaks: “\n” or “< br >”, and thus converting two or more paragraphs into one single line

but then i was receiving xml data…
if you really wanna pass it by flashvars your only option is to look a php function that does that and then print the result to a flashvar

in this address i found this function (not tested):

<?php
function remove_extra_linebreaks($string) {
  $new_string=urlencode ($string);
  $new_string=ereg_replace("%0D", " ", $new_string);
  $new_string=urldecode  ($new_string);
  return $new_string;
}
?>

so your code would be something like this (not tested):

<?php $myexcerpt = remove_extra_linebreaks(the_excerpt()); ?>
var flashvars = {
  flashText: "<?php echo $myexcerpt; ?>"
};

I will take the blame for changing the topic to Flash, but it is still about modifying the_excerpt (or the_excerpt_rss)!

Thanks for the function… I will give it a try. And yes, the problem is in Javascript, not Actionscript — but no matter what I tried previously with PHP, I could not get rid of that line break. So hopefully your function will work! I will report back…

A quick and easy way would be to type your own excerpts when you publish your posts. If you enter something in the excerpt box in the post editor only that which you enter will be shown in the excerpt.

Another way would be to code to show the full content. You then however add a more link to the post. This will ensure that only the bit before the more link is shown.

I finally figured out how to solve my flashvars problem above……
I just used “get_the_excerpt” to pull my manual excerpt into swfobject, and it came in without the line break or html tags. SWEET!

http://www.marcysutton.com/

<?php $args1 = array('cat=1');
  query_posts($args1);
  $posts = get_posts('numberposts=1&cat=1');
  foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp();
  $excerpt = get_the_excerpt();?>
<script type="text/javascript">
	var flashvars = {};
	var params = {};
	params.wmode = "transparent"; params.allowScriptAccess = 'true'; params.scaleMode = "noscale";
	var attributes = {};
	swfobject.embedSWF("preload.swf",
		"flashContainer", "100%", "100%", "9.0.0",
		"inc/expressInstall.swf",
		{permalink:"<?php the_permalink(); ?>",
		 the_title:"<?php strtolower(the_title()); ?>",
		 excerpt:'<?php global $excerpt; echo $excerpt; ?>'},
		 params, attributes);
</script>
<?php endforeach; ?>

http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Read_More

Or something like
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/excerpt-editor/
If you’re lazy like me