Manual content summaries insert with <p> tag

[jstamant]

While designing my own theme, I came across a curious issue:

When using the {{ .Summary }} page variable to manually generate a summary in combination with the <!--more--> tag in a post, Hugo inserts the summary wrapped with a <p> tag.

Here's what I'm expecting:

When using the {{ .Summary }} page variable to automatically generate summaries, Hugo simply inserts the summary text in the template - not wrapped with any HTML tags.

$ hugo version
hugo v0.87.0+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=unknown

I am using the latest release. So, yes, this issue is reproducible in the latest release.

summary.html template file

<p class="excerpt">
  {{ .Summary }}
</p>
{{- if .Truncated }}
<p>
  <a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}">Read more...</a>
</p>
{{- end }}

Reproducible erroneous behavior

See this example with manual summary generation:

test.md

---
title: "Test"
date: 2021-08-08T13:33:29-05:00
draft: false
---

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.<!--more-->

Result

<p class="excerpt">
  <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>
</p>
<p>
  <a href="/posts/test/">Read more...</a>
</p>

Expected behavior

Now compare this to what I'm expecting:

test.md

---
title: "Test"
date: 2021-08-08T13:33:29-05:00
draft: false
---

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

Result

<p class="excerpt">
  <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>
</p>
<p>
  <a href="/posts/test/">Read more...</a>
</p>

[jmooring]

When you render .Summary in a template, the result depends on how the summary was defined for the given page.

Method	Description	Renders markdown to HTML	Renders shortcodes	Strips HTML tags	Wraps single lines with <p>
A	Automatic summary	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌
B	Manual summary1	✔️	✔️	❌	✔️
C	Front matter summary2	✔️	❌	❌	❌

As a template author, you have no way of knowing if .Summary:

• Contains raw (not rendered) shortcodes
• Has been stripped of its HTML tags
• Has been wrapped within a <p> element

You can determine if the summary was defined in front matter, and access its raw value, with .Params.Summary, but the ability to do that may be affected in the future by #11055. Notes that .Params.Summary returns nil with automatic and manual summaries.

Related:

• automatic summary missing formatting/html #7926
• Markdownify and .Summary sometimes produce an unclosed <p> tag #7372
• Allow disabling summarization #6296
• {{ .Summary }} includes unwanted text in certain circumstances #1503
• Manual summary breaks Markdown formatting #11440

Somewhat related, applicable to HTML content pages:

• html content does not include summary, whereas md content does #6686
• Shortcodes do not get evaluated in HTML content files with manual summary splitting #6513

Somewhat related (embedded templates):

• Plainify summary text in internal meta templates #8562

Example site with an example of each summary method:

git clone --single-branch -b hugo-github-issue-8910 https://github.com/jmooring/hugo-testing hugo-github-issue-8910
cd hugo-github-issue-8910
hugo server

Footnotes

1. Manual summary takes precedence over front matter summary ↩

2. Front matter summary takes precedence over automatic summary. ↩

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. The resources of the Hugo team are limited, and so we are asking for your help.
If this is a bug and you can still reproduce this error on the master branch, please reply with all of the information you have about it in order to keep the issue open.
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This issue will automatically be closed in the near future if no further activity occurs. Thank you for all your contributions.

[ptgott]

@bep @jmooring What would you think the solution should be? Looks like some choices are:

• Returning raw Markdown for all three summary mechanisms with no <p> tags: That way, a template author could call, say, .RenderString if they wanted HTML. At the same time, I'm not sure why you'd want an unprocessed summary unless you were creating one manually via frontmatter.
• Returning processed HTML for all three summary mechanisms: The downside is that an author might want control over how they render a summary, e.g., in a <span> rather than a <p>.
• Changing the Page API to include .Summary and .RawSummary properties. The first returns processed HTML and the second returns raw Markdown.
• Leaving this functionality as-is and documenting it: This won't break any existing templates, at least.

[okaestne]

I think we all can agree that this is unexpected behavior. I would have never guessed that the <p> tags are missing when using the manual summary method just be defining the point using <!--more-->. I also stumbled upon this while designing my template because I tried add CSS styles to the p elements.

I can also understand that there are use-cases for a summary in form of raw text. Therefore I would prefer @ptgott 3rd suggestion most.

[rodrigo-brito]

I'm using this combination of filters to retrieve the RAW Summary:

{{ .Summary | plainify | htmlUnescape | chomp }}}

[cskartikey]

The unexpected behavior still exists as of now.