Formatting text area?!?

Hello.

I am having a problem with all my forms and stuff.

How do I make a text area in a form, similar to the one that you use to post messages on this forum. Like what I mean is, with the database that I have at the moment, if you put a line break or somethign in the text area of a form, it doesn't add it in the database.

Example: This is how I put it into the text area:-

Hello!

It's James Here.

bye

But this is how it comes out.

Hello! It'/s James Here. bye

any help?

James

The tabs and newlines are almost certainly in your database, (unless you run a script that removes them first)

The issue is converting those back into HTML as opposed to '\t' '\r' & '\n' etc

You do not say which database or lannguage you are using to access it but in PHP


<?echo nl2br($row['from_database']);?>

will convert \n or \r\n to <br />(actually it adds a <br /> to the end of a string the \n is kept intact)

if that function did not exist I would be using
<?str_replace("\n","\n<br />",$row['from_database']);?>

and there are similar replace functions in most server-side languages.

as for the '\' before your apostrophe , PHP provides stripslashes() though you can str_replace them as well if required.

i am using a MySQL database - is it the same?

What language are you using to write your web pages? PHP? ASP?

In ASP, I usually do this:

When you drop the textarea value into the database, escape() it first:

var myTextValue=escape(Request.Form("myTextArea"));

this replaces all the line breaks with "%0D%0A", so when you get the text back out of the database, you just replace it:

var myText = rs.Fields("textarea").value;
while(myText .indexOf("%0D%0A")>-1){
myText = myText .replace("%0D%0A", "<br>");
}

And then you can Response.Write(myText) and it's got line breaks in.

Any use?

Spudhead, FYI - a much easier method (for ASP):


Function VbCrLfToBreak(byVal str) ''''''''''''''''
If IsNull(str) Then str = ""
VbCrLfToBreak = Replace(str,vbCrLf,"<br />")
End Function '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Response.Write(VbCrLfToBreak(rs("Whatever")))


:)

I forgot to mention, line breaks are preserved when you put a textarea into a database, you just have to replace them with <br /> when you retrieve them.

So escaping them when you put them in is just a waste of time. :)

Hi.. I have this same problem with a textarea in a form I made... line breaks are output as \r\n and nl2br() on the string just returns the same string, it's not working like it should for some reason. I also tried doing $str = str_replace("\r\n","<br />",$str); and this, for some reason, is not working either. I tried doing it to the string variable both before insertion to the databese, and also after retrieval, and nothing works... I keep getting the \r\n :(

Can you post exactly what you retrieve from the database right now, compared to the string you input in the textarea? The answer lies there!!! I guarantee it.

ok, before I do that, I just want to ask: what's better, to replace \r\n to <br /> before insertion to the database, or insert it with the \r\n and then replacing the characters when the string is going to be displayed?

The first option would be better because it would be converted less times.

Thanks for your help, I solved the problem. It was a stupid function that was escaping special characters from my strings, turning \r\n into \\r\\n, and thus making nl2br useless. Thanks again!