Removes the junk that wpautop adds to shortcodes in WordPress.

README.md

Remove Crappy Markup from WordPress Shortcodes

When using shortcodes in WordPress like so:

[shortcode]

Content goes here...

[/shortcode]

And assuming that the shortcode wraps your content with another element, sort of like this:

function my_shortcode( $attr, $content )
{
    return '<div class="my_shortcode">' . $content . '</div>';
}
add_shortcode('shortcode', 'my_shortcode');

The built-in WordPress wpautop filter will add junk markup to your output:

<div class="my_shortcode">
</p>
<p>Content goes here...</p>
<p>
</div>

Adding copter_remove_crappy_markup() to the shorcode will clean up the output:

function my_shortcode( $attr, $content )
{
    $clean = copter_remove_crappy_markup($content);
    return '<div class="my_shortcode">' . $clean . '</div>';
}
add_shortcode('shortcode', 'my_shortcode');

Resulting in:

<div class="my_shortcode">
<p>Content goes here...</p>
</div>

removecrappymarkup.php

<?php

/**
 * Removes mismatched </p> and <p> tags from the beginning and end of a snippet.
 * 
 * @author Jason Lengstorf <jason@copterlabs.com>
 */
function copter_remove_crappy_markup( $string )
{
    $patterns = array(
        '#^\s*</p>#',
        '#<p>\s*$#'
    );

    return preg_replace($patterns, '', $string);
}

Thanks for your function. I have used it until I read about WordPress' built-in filter shortcode_unautop on http://www.paulund.co.uk/remove-line-breaks-in-shortcodes. I guess that's a better way to clean up the markup.

@karlschwaier That's an interesting approach — more or less the same as mine, just with a far more complex regex. Nice to know that WP has that built in, though. I was unaware they'd handled that already. Thanks for the heads up!

How did you create the pattern for the <p> tags, I would like to use this function but also include
I tried a regular regex pattern, doesn't work.
'#^\s*</p># equivelent for <br>

Ummmm, btw, what's up with the use of the variable names $pee and $pee_parts in WP core files in wp-includes/formatting.php