How to keep text inserted in a html <textarea> after a wrong submission?

Question

Suppose I have a form like this:

    Section1: 

    Sec         


        

Answer 1

Don't forget about htmlspecialchars(). This should help: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/textarea

<textarea name="post_text" cols="100" rows="20"><?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST['post_text']);?></textarea>

Answer 2

You could use the same approach, but put the echo between the opening and closing <textarea></textarea> tags, as the textarea doesn't have a 'value' (as such) it has textual content:

<textarea name="post_text" cols="100" rows="20"><?php echo $_POST['textareaContent']; ?></textarea>

Answer 3

You would put it inside the <textarea> element like so:

<textarea name="post_text" cols="100" rows="20"><?php echo $_POST['post_text']; ?></textarea>

However, calling the $_POST element directly is not best practice. You should rather do something like this:

<textarea name="post_text" cols="100" rows="20">
<?php echo $var = isset($_POST['post_text']) ? $_POST['post_text'] : ''; ?>
</textarea>

This stops an E_NOTICE error from being reported upon the first page-load.

Answer 4

Use the $_POST variable like this.

<textarea name="post_text" cols="100" rows="20"><?= isset($_POST['post_text'])?$_POST['post_text']:'' ?></textarea>

the inline conditional checks if the $_POST['post_text'] is set to remove the NOTICE warning