Show the submitted values in the form when validation fails

You can’t. If you’re using the settings API correctly, here’s what happens when you try to save your options: Form posts to options.php WordPress handles $_POST and runs update_option on your registered settings Your sanitize callback from register_setting is applied Any data that fails/you don’t return in your callback isn’t saved WordPress redirects back to … Read more

Unable to sanitize in customizer and escape in theme without removing ability for user to use “< br >” to insert a line break

You should use the helping site of validation – https://codex.wordpress.org/Data_Validation I think in your context is wp_kses the right function. You can allow html tags. The function have a lot of possibilities to use it with custom requirements. A small example to fast usage: $allowed_html = array( ‘a’ => array( ‘href’ => array(), ‘title’ => … Read more