Preserve Line Breaks From TextArea When Writing To MySQL

112
votes

I'm using a textarea to enable users to input comments. However, if the users enters new lines, the new lines don't appear when they are outputted. Is there any way to make the line breaks stay.

Any idea how do preserve the line breaks?

7
phpmysqlhtml
I've just disabled htmlawed, and it seems that it has nothing to do with line breaks, the line breaks still don't show. So I'm just writing the textarea data directly to mysql, and it doesn't show up when i echo data from mysql database. – Hirvesh
I've also browsed the mysql table using phpmyadmin and seen the comment field. No <br/> tags are being stored, – Hirvesh
I'm doing a Facebook style comment system, so I don't really want it to be wysiwyg. No ideas why line breaks don't preserve then? – Hirvesh
possible duplicate of keep textarea input format after using mysql_real_escape_string to store – Giorgos Tsakonas

7 Answers

163
votes

Two solutions for this:

  1. PHP function nl2br():

    e.g.,

    echo nl2br("This\r\nis\n\ra\nstring\r");

// will output
This<br />
is<br />
a<br />
string<br />

  2. Wrap the input in <pre></pre> tags.

    See: W3C Wiki - HTML/Elements/pre

37
votes

Here is what I use

$textToStore = nl2br(htmlentities($inputText, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));

$inputText is the text provided by either the form or textarea. $textToStore is the returned text from nl2br and htmlentities, to be stored in your database. ENT_QUOTES will convert both double and single quotes, so you'll have no trouble with those.

4
votes

Got my own answer: Using this function from the data from the textarea solves the problem:

function mynl2br($text) { 
   return strtr($text, array("\r\n" => '<br />', "\r" => '<br />', "\n" => '<br />')); 
}

More here: http://php.net/nl2br

2
votes

i am using this two method steps for preserve same text which is in textarea to store in mysql and at a getting time i can also simply displaying plain text.....

step 1:

$status=$_POST['status'];<br/>
$textToStore = nl2br(htmlentities($status, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));

In query enter $textToStore....

step 2:

write code for select query...and direct echo values....

It works

1
votes

This works:

function getBreakText($t) {
    return strtr($t, array('\\r\\n' => '<br>', '\\r' => '<br>', '\\n' => '<br>'));
}
0
votes
function breakit($t) {
    return nl2br(htmlentities($t, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));
}

this may help you

pass the textarea wal

-8
votes

why make is sooooo hard people when it can be soooo easy :)

//here is the pull from the form
$your_form_text = $_POST['your_form_text'];


//line 1 fixes the line breaks - line 2 the slashes
$your_form_text = nl2br($your_form_text);
$your_form_text = stripslashes($your_form_text);

//email away
$message = "Comments: $your_form_text";
mail("[email protected]", "Website Form Submission", $message, $headers);

you will obviously need headers and likely have more fields, but this is your textarea take care of