Empty excerpt using wp_get_recent_posts

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I have this simple shortcode to display the last posts with it’s title and except:

add_shortcode('latest3', function(){
    $recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts(
            array(
                'numberposts'   => 3,
                'orderby'       => 'post_date',
                'order'         => 'DESC',
                'post_type'     => 'post',
                'post_status'   => 'publish'
            ), ARRAY_A);

    $output="<h2>Latest posts</h2>";
    foreach ( $recent_posts as $recent ) {
        $output .= '<h3>'.$recent["post_title"].'</h3>';
        $output .= $recent["post_excerpt"];
    }
    return $output;
});

But for some reason the excerpt output is empty. print_r($recents) shows that there is indeed an array key called post_excerpt but is shown always empty.

2 Answers
2

The post_excerpt value is empty because you have no explicit excerpts for your posts. While the_excerpt() does generate an excerpt from the posts content if the post excerpt is empty, the function wp_get_recent_posts(), which is basically a wrapper for get_posts(), doesn’t.

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