Preserve Line Breaks From TextArea When Writing To MySQL

Question

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 m

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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("destination_email@whatever.com", "Website Form Submission", $message, $headers);

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

This works:

function getBreakText($t) {
    return strtr($t, array('\\r\\n' => '<br>', '\\r' => '<br>', '\\n' => '<br>'));
}

Answer 5

function breakit($t) {
    return nl2br(htmlentities($t, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));
}

this may help you

pass the textarea wal

Answer 6

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.