Here’s my solution. While this post hasn’t even been read, at least this will be here if someone else runs into the situation.
In a nutshell, the custom blocks that ACF can create for Gutenberg are stored as JSON in the content field which are then hidden by HTML comments.
While this hidden-JSON content is searchable and will cause an item to appear in the search result, the content itself is “invisible” to WordPress’ core get_the_excerpt() or get_the_content() functionality which you commonly use in search results. The result is a search result with no blurb.
The work-around I found for my project was to attempt to generate an excerpt. Then, if the excerpt was empty, try to generate a blurb by search for custom blocks.
The following example is a bit messy, but nobody’s even looked for the past three weeks, so… if you have questions, I’ll try to help.
<div class="search-blurb"><?php
// Attempt to generate an excerpt
$excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
// If no excerpt is generated, try to generate an excerpt from ACF blocks
if ( !$excerpt ) {
// Grab ACF blocks from page
if ( function_exists( 'get_field' ) ) {
$pid = get_post();
if ( has_blocks( $pid_content ) ) {
$blocks = parse_blocks( $pid->post_content );
// Cycle through each block
foreach ( $blocks as $block ) {
// If the result is not empty, you have a blurb, so move on
if ( $excerpt != '' ) {
break;
// Otherwise, $excerpt is still empty so try to fill it
} else {
/* In the following if/else block, I run through the custom blocks that I assume will have content worthy of a search result blurb */
if ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/narrow-content-block' ) {
// Uncomment the following section to SEE what JSON you have to work with
/*
echo 'acf/narrow-content-block<br /><pre>';
print_r( $block );
echo '</pre>';
*/
// The $block['attrs'['data']['narrow_content_content'] property has the best chance to generate blurb-worthy content in this custom block
$excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['narrow_content_content'];
} elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/image-video-block' ) {
/*
echo 'acf/image-video-block<br /><pre>';
print_r( $block );
echo '</pre>';
*/
$excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['img_vid_text'];
} elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/general-content-block' ) {
/*
echo 'acf/general-content-block<br /><pre>';
print_r( $block );
echo '</pre>';
*/
$excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['general_content_content'];
} elseif ( $block['blockName'] === 'acf/inset-cta-block' ) {
/*
echo 'acf/inset-cta-block<br /><pre>';
print_r( $block );
echo '</pre>';
*/
$excerpt .= $block['attrs']['data']['inset_cta_content'];
}
}
}
}
}
}
// Generate a blurb from the $excerpt you've generated
$excerpt = substr( $excerpt, 0, 260);
$result = substr( $excerpt, 0, strrpos( $excerpt, ' ') );
echo ( $result ? strip_tags( $result ).'...' : '' );
?></div>
