How get HTML entities to display correctly in Buddypress messages

Question

In BuddyPress the messages preview window truncates the message at one line (225 characters), and then appends a horizontal ellipsis.

Unfortunately, this HTML entity displays as a string, and is not parsed to display as an ellipse.

We have tried all the HTML codes for ellipse, all display as strings.

The function that controls this in the /plugins/bp-core/bp-core-template.php file (start line 878)

Does anybody know how to fix this problem? Many, many thanks in advance. (Code below)

function bp_create_excerpt( $text, $length = 225, $options = array() ) {

    // Backward compatibility. The third argument used to be a boolean $filter_shortcodes.
    $filter_shortcodes_default = is_bool( $options ) ? $options : true;

    $r = bp_parse_args(
        $options,
        array(
            'ending'            => __(  ' [U+02026] '  , 'buddypress' ),
            'exact'             => false,
            'html'              => true,
            'filter_shortcodes' => $filter_shortcodes_default,
            'strip_tags'        => false,
            'remove_links'      => false,
        ),
        'create_excerpt'
    );

    // Save the original text, to be passed along to the filter.
    $original_text = $text;

    /**
     * Filters the excerpt length to trim text to.
     *
     * @since 1.5.0
     *
     * @param int $length Length of returned string, including ellipsis.
     */
    $length = apply_filters( 'bp_excerpt_length',      $length      );

    /**
     * Filters the excerpt appended text value.
     *
     * @since 1.5.0
     *
     * @param string $value Text to append to the end of the excerpt.
     */
    $ending = apply_filters( 'bp_excerpt_append_text', $r['ending'] );

    // Remove shortcodes if necessary.
    if ( ! empty( $r['filter_shortcodes'] ) ) {
        $text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
    }

    // When $html is true, the excerpt should be created without including HTML tags in the
    // excerpt length.
    if ( ! empty( $r['html'] ) ) {

        // The text is short enough. No need to truncate.
        if ( mb_strlen( preg_replace( '/<.*?>/', '', $text ) ) <= $length ) {
            return $text;
        }

        $totalLength = mb_strlen( strip_tags( $ending ) );
        $openTags    = array();
        $truncate    = '';

        // Find all the tags and HTML comments and put them in a stack for later use.
        preg_match_all( '/(<\/?([\w+!]+)[^>]*>)?([^<>]*)/', $text, $tags, PREG_SET_ORDER );

        foreach ( $tags as $tag ) {
            // Process tags that need to be closed.
            if ( !preg_match( '/img|br|input|hr|area|base|basefont|col|frame|isindex|link|meta|param/s',  $tag[2] ) ) {
                if ( preg_match( '/<[\w]+[^>]*>/s', $tag[0] ) ) {
                    array_unshift( $openTags, $tag[2] );
                } elseif ( preg_match('/<\/([\w]+)[^>]*>/s', $tag[0], $closeTag ) ) {
                    $pos = array_search( $closeTag[1], $openTags );
                    if ( $pos !== false ) {
                        array_splice( $openTags, $pos, 1 );
                    }
                }
            }

            $truncate     .= $tag[1];
            $contentLength = mb_strlen( preg_replace( '/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#[0-9]{1,7};|&#x[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', ' ', $tag[3] ) );

            if ( $contentLength + $totalLength > $length ) {
                $left = $length - $totalLength;
                $entitiesLength = 0;
                if ( preg_match_all( '/&[0-9a-z]{2,8};|&#[0-9]{1,7};|&#x[0-9a-f]{1,6};/i', $tag[3], $entities, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE ) ) {
                    foreach ( $entities[0] as $entity ) {
                        if ( $entity[1] + 1 - $entitiesLength <= $left ) {
                            $left--;
                            $entitiesLength += mb_strlen( $entity[0] );
                        } else {
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                }

                $truncate .= mb_substr( $tag[3], 0 , $left + $entitiesLength );
                break;
            } else {
                $truncate .= $tag[3];
                $totalLength += $contentLength;
            }
            if ( $totalLength >= $length ) {
                break;
            }
        }
    } else {
        // Strip HTML tags if necessary.
        if ( ! empty( $r['strip_tags'] ) ) {
            $text = strip_tags( $text );
        }

        // Remove links if necessary.
        if ( ! empty( $r['remove_links'] ) ) {
            $text = preg_replace( '#^\s*(https?://[^\s"]+)\s*$#im', '', $text );
        }

        if ( mb_strlen( $text ) <= $length ) {
            /**
             * Filters the final generated excerpt.
             *
             * @since 1.1.0
             *
             * @param string $text          Generated excerpt.
             * @param string $original_text Original text provided.
             * @param int    $length        Length of returned string, including ellipsis.
             * @param array  $options       Array of HTML attributes and options.
             */
            return apply_filters( 'bp_create_excerpt', $text, $original_text, $length, $options );
        } else {
            $truncate = mb_substr( $text, 0, $length - mb_strlen( $ending ) );
        }
    }

    // If $exact is false, we can't break on words.
    if ( empty( $r['exact'] ) ) {
        // Find the position of the last space character not part of a tag.
        preg_match_all( '/<[a-z\!\/][^>]*>/', $truncate, $_truncate_tags, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE );

        // Rekey tags by the string index of their last character.
        $truncate_tags = array();
        if ( ! empty( $_truncate_tags[0] ) ) {
            foreach ( $_truncate_tags[0] as $_tt ) {
                $_tt['start'] = $_tt[1];
                $_tt['end']   = $_tt[1] + strlen( $_tt[0] );
                $truncate_tags[ $_tt['end'] ] = $_tt;
            }
        }

        $truncate_length = mb_strlen( $truncate );
        $spacepos = $truncate_length + 1;
        for ( $pos = $truncate_length - 1; $pos >= 0; $pos-- ) {
            // Word boundaries are spaces and the close of HTML tags, when the tag is preceded by a space.
            $is_word_boundary = ' ' === $truncate[ $pos ];
            if ( ! $is_word_boundary && isset( $truncate_tags[ $pos - 1 ] ) ) {
                $preceding_tag    = $truncate_tags[ $pos - 1 ];
                if ( ' ' === $truncate[ $preceding_tag['start'] - 1 ] ) {
                    $is_word_boundary = true;
                    break;
                }
            }

            if ( ! $is_word_boundary ) {
                continue;
            }

            // If there are no tags in the string, the first space found is the right one.
            if ( empty( $truncate_tags ) ) {
                $spacepos = $pos;
                break;
            }

            // Look at each tag to see if the space is inside of it.
            $intag = false;
            foreach ( $truncate_tags as $tt ) {
                if ( $pos > $tt['start'] && $pos < $tt['end'] ) {
                    $intag = true;
                    break;
                }
            }

            if ( ! $intag ) {
                $spacepos = $pos;
                break;
            }
        }

        if ( $r['html'] ) {
            $bits = mb_substr( $truncate, $spacepos );
            preg_match_all( '/<\/([a-z]+)>/', $bits, $droppedTags, PREG_SET_ORDER );
            if ( !empty( $droppedTags ) ) {
                foreach ( $droppedTags as $closingTag ) {
                    if ( !in_array( $closingTag[1], $openTags ) ) {
                        array_unshift( $openTags, $closingTag[1] );
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        $truncate = rtrim( mb_substr( $truncate, 0, $spacepos ) );
    }
    $truncate .= $ending;

    if ( !empty( $r['html'] ) ) {
        foreach ( $openTags as $tag ) {
            $truncate .= '</' . $tag . '>';
        }
    }

    /** This filter is documented in /bp-core/bp-core-template.php */
    return apply_filters( 'bp_create_excerpt', $truncate, $original_text, $length, $options );
}
add_filter( 'bp_create_excerpt', 'stripslashes_deep'  );
add_filter( 'bp_create_excerpt', 'force_balance_tags' );

Trying to get the messages preview window to display the HTML entities correcty, instead of actual strings.

Answer 1

To display a horizontal ellipsis instead of the HTML entity string in the message preview window in BuddyPress, you can use to replace the entity string with the actual Unicode character for the ellipsis likewise 

and you can write like this

'ending' => __( '…' , 'buddypress' ) The ellipsis character '…' is represented by the Unicode character U+2026, which is a single character, After making the change, save the file and refresh your BuddyPress site to see the updated preview window. i hope this will help you