[wp-hackers] Re: filter the_exceprt

[Dan Gayle]

This is why I usually end up using
<?php the_content_rss('', TRUE, '', 55); ?>

It basically does the same thing as the_excerpt(), but allows more  
options.

On Jan 14, 2009, at 11:43 AM, Jeremy Clarke wrote:

> I think that get_the_excerpt and the_excerpt are both pretty lame
> actually. How is it that the right amount of parameters for these
> functions is zero? There used to be a parameter but now its gone?
>
> 249  function get_the_excerpt($deprecated = '') {
>
> If nothing else, it should allow for fetching the excerpt from
> arbitrary post_id's. It also seems very clear that defining the
> character length of automatic excerpts would be very very useful to
> have access to at this point (so that any excerpts you fail to input,
> which happens believe me, are about as long as your average manual
> excerpts). Then finally as mentioned the elipsis string would be very
> useful, giving something like:
>
> function get_the_excerpt($post_id = NULL, $length = 50, $after =  
> '[...]')
>
> As it is all the default formatting happens i guess through WP adding
> its own filters on the_excerpt, which is nice because plugins can
> override the behavior, but is hard for normal users to get their heads
> around. They are used to giving parameters to template tags and I
> think this is a case where making that work would be very useful.
>
> If there's an issue with the deprecated parameter I think we might as
> well switch to get_excerpt() instead of get_THE_excerpt(), the former
> is more in tune with WP's naming conventions anyway IMHO.