Simple forum question

serendipity

I am saving messages from a forum as text in a mysql database. To edit messages I fetch the message from the db, and print it in a textarea. The problem is that the first line of the message never starts at the beginning (top left). It starts somewhat to the right.

Anyone know what couses this? I can't find any good reason for this.

kennethl

Nah, I use that method for editing db contents all the time. Show us your code!

Are there leading blank spaces in your DB somehow? Maybe if you trim() your variables before sticking them in that textarea?

serendipity

My code is as follows:

When inserting a new message I get the variable $textarea_1, which contains the message.

I then query the database:

$Query1 = "insert into MessageM set FromP = \"$UserName\", ToP = \"$To\", Topic = \"$text_4\", Message = \"$textarea_1\", RegDate = now()";

mysql_query($Query1, $mysql_link)
or die (dbQueryE());

then to edit the message I query again:

$Query = "select * from MessageM where GMID = \"$GMID\"";

$mysql_result = mysql_query($Query, $mysql_link)
or die (dbQueryE());

$row = mysql_fetch_array($mysql_result);

then I print it:

<textarea name="textarea_1" cols="55" rows="10" align="center">
<?php
$tmp = $row["Message"];
$tmp = str_replace('<br>', "\n", $tmp);
print$tmp;
?>
</textarea>

kennethl

I don't see any obvious errors. Is it just the first line in the textarea that's indented? If so, I'd say you're somehow getting blank spaces at the beginning of "Message"; Have you looked at "Message" on its own? Try echoing this to the browser with two characters on either side like:

echo "".$tmp."";

Then view the source of the page and see if there are unexpected blank spaces between $tmp and the two asterisks. Try:

echo trim($tmp);

Otherwise, if you mean the entire textarea is right-indented, that sounds like an HTML/browser problem rather than a PHP problem.

reagent

this looks suspect:
<textarea name="textarea_1" cols="55" rows="10" align="center">
<?php
$tmp = $row["Message"];
$tmp = str_replace('<br>', "\n", $tmp);
print$tmp;
?>
</textarea>

try getting rid of any carriage returns between the textarea tags like so:

<textarea name="textarea_1" cols="55" rows="10" align="center"><?php
$tmp = $row["Message"];
$tmp = str_replace('<br>', "\n", $tmp);
print$tmp; ?></textarea>

hth

serendipity

Thanks for the help, but it turns out there was really nothing wrong with the code, it wasn't even a php problem, something with html.

If i wrote:

then the first line of the text would be indented.

however if I wrote it like this:

then there was no problem.

So I ended up with this code:

<?php
$tmp = $row["Message"];
$tmp = str_replace('<br>', "\n", $tmp);
print"<textarea name=\"textarea_1\">$tmp";
?>
</textarea>

and it works just fine 🙂

reagent

<textarea name="textarea_1"><?= str_replace('<br>', "\n", $row["Message"]); ?></textarea>

might be a little more simplified