I created issue #1160368 the Search API module. The developer of that module said that the issue lies with the Entity API, so I'm creating a ticket here. I apologize for my lack of knowledge of this module at all. I must simply quote my original ticket:

In a node index view, I would expect a "The main body text: Summary" field to behave in a similar fashion to the "Content: Body" field in a normal content view, formatted as "Summary or trimmed". That is, even if a summary hasn't explicitly been set, a summary should still be displayed.

However, this isn't the case. The summary field doesn't display anything. The best workaround is to use the "The main body text: Text" field and trim it. This isn't ideal, though, because if a summary *has* been explicitly set, it's now ignored.

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#5 Screenshot 2019-03-13 07.43.23.png38.78 KBpameeela

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a1russell’s picture

a1russell commented

Bah, I didn't correctly link my original bug:
#1160368: Views integration: summaries do not display

fago’s picture

fago
Primary language German
Location Vienna
commented

hm, I guess that might happen if the summary is getting stored as empty string. If the core behaviour then is to not show the empty string, but an on-the-fly generated summary we should indeed follow that.

I.e. we should probably fix entity_metadata_field_text_get() or adapt entity_metadata_field_text_property_callback() to add in another callback in case we need the on-the-fly summary.

Patch welcome :)

pameeela’s picture

pameeela commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)
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new Screenshot 2019-03-13 07.43.23.png38.78 KB

I came across this issue and after a lot of stuffing around I figured out the way it works.

Instead of using "The main body text: Summary" as the field in the view, just use the Body field and select "Summary or trimmed" as the formatter in the field settings.

Not sure whether this was available 8 years ago but figured I could close off an old issue :)