Inserting values into a textarea

Anon

I have got a problem inserting a php variable into a textarea in my form. I can insert variables into textboxes fine but the textarea's seem to be a problem.
Can anyone assist?

Thanks,
Ian

majik-sheff

Can you post the code you are using?

slant

I'm not sure what your code looks like, but I do know that textareas are EXTREMELY different from a standard text box.

Example of correctly "pre-valued" text box and text area:

Text Box:
<input type="text" value="predefined text">

You might notice that I have used the "value" attribute to populate this text box.

Textarea:
<textarea name="myTextArea">predefined text</textarea>

This time instead of using the "value" attribute, I actually used the textarea as I would an anchor (hyperlink) tag. Much different!!

Both of these examples will come out on the page with the phrase "predefined text" in them.

Hope that helps...

../slant

slant

Arg, pardon. I was intending to use a PHP example, not an HTML example.

echo "<input type='text' value='" . $var . "'>";

../slant

majik-sheff

Your HTML is actually more useful. Give this a shot:

print "<textarea name=\"myTextArea\">$var</textarea>";

slant

Great!! Thanks, Majik! Is "print" more of a standard than "echo"?

majik-sheff

They are functionally identical. Echo is more commonly used (even by me), I just happened to use print there. 🙂

majik-sheff

oh, and your example of PHP was also correct, you just had 1 typo:

You need a semicolon here------------------|
<textarea name="myTextArea"><?php echo $var; ?></textarea>

🙂

slant

lol, thx. Good eye. So, after all of my mistakes, you actually got something out of that? hehe. hey, you seem pretty knowledgable, how about taking a look at my "HTML structure of MySQL content" post? eh? eh? common, ya know ya want too... 😉

Anon

Thanks very much to both of you.....Your examples were extremely helpfull.....

Ian

Anon

I hope you don't mind one omre question, I can't figure out how to make the field non-editable....?!?
Thanks again,
Ian

majik-sheff

This will only work for IE 5.5, all other browsers will ignore it:

If you want it to work for any other browser you'll need to write a javascript that prevents editing.

majik-sheff

correction, this tag will work with IE 4 and Netscape 6