RSS excerpt issue with Flipboard

function wp_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
  global $post;
  if ( '' == $text ) {
    $text = get_the_content('');
    $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
    $text = str_replace('\]\]\>', ']]>', $text);
    $text = strip_tags($text);
    $excerpt_length = 55;
    $words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
    if (count($words)> $excerpt_length) {
      array_pop($words);
      array_push($words, '[...]');
      $text = implode(' ', $words);
    }
  }
return $text;
}

This is the code that generates the excerpt I think although it seems that excerpt length is ignored by Flipboard. Renaming it and adding it to functions.php with the following edit should do the trick:

$text = strip_tags($text, '<p>');

but I’m unsure how to target it at the single feed rather than excerpts in general. Found at https://aaronrussell.co.uk/legacy/improving-wordpress-the_excerpt/

You could try using the value of $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’] to decide which version of strip_tags() to use.

A feed with any HTML is technically invalid, but I suppose if it works go for it. Does it work? I’d be surprised if flipboard didn’t do their own validation and strip out the tags anyway.

Thank you bcworkz. I’ve added a snippet in to my functions.php because when I delved in to my version of WordPress I think the above code is outdated. This is what I added – does it look coded correctly (not withstanding that it may not work)?:

//include paragraphs in excerpts
function skips_strip_all_tags($string, $remove_breaks = false) {
	$string = preg_replace( '@<(script|style)[^>]*?>.*?</\\1>@si', '', $string );
	$string = strip_tags($string, '<p>');

	if ( $remove_breaks )
		$string = preg_replace('/[\r\n\t ]+/', ' ', $string);

	return trim( $string );
}

remove_filter('wp_trim_words', 'wp_strip_all_tags');
add_filter('wp_trim_words', 'skips_strip_all_tags');

I got to this by looking at the core formatting.php file and tracing through how it seems to create the excerpt. It is exactly the same as the core file with the addition of the <p> tag to this line:

$string = strip_tags($string, '<p>');

The reason I think this should in theory work is that when I see other excerpts on Flipboard it seems to respect paragraphs (or line breaks at least – paragraphs are unformatted) but mine just all merge together into a single block. The full post which is gathered from RSS appears to respect many html tags and is nicely formatted – is just the excerpt that’s a problem.

I can’t say whether it works because I’m not sure how to force Flipboard to re-cache the RSS feed now that it already has it. I find RSS confusing!

Yes, on a cursory look that code should do what you want.
Not only is RSS confusing, I know little of the inner workings, other than the feed is an XML file.

I have to wonder if there is something in the RSS schema which allows for paragraph breaks on a formal level, considering HTML tags are invalid. If there is such a thing, that would be the best approach because it would result in completely valid XML.