Store spaces from text fields

acidbox

I would like to store text fields as they are written, similar to a forum like this one. It seems that whenever I store a information from a text box, similar to that of the message I am presently typing, It just ignores whitespace that I enter, and clumps it all together. How do I get mysql to recognize when I do a character return, like this...

See?

one more =)

If I were to store this message on my server, it would all appear as if there was no spaces. Any help?

merkinmuffley

when you take input from a textarea where the user hit the enter key, it has newline characters in it. if you don't do anything to the data, those newline characters will end up in your database.

when you retrieve it and display it, though, the browser won't show line breaks for those newline characters, because HTML doesn't work that way... that's why somebody invented the nl2br function:

$str = nl2br($str);

will create a <br> tag in $str for each newline character.

acidbox

thanks, im an idiot, all i had to do was <pre> my output. DUH!

acidbox

actually, your way works better 🙂

jeroom

Originally posted by merkinmuffley
when you take input from a textarea where the user hit the enter key, it has newline characters in it. if you don't do anything to the data, those newline characters will end up in your database.

when you retrieve it and display it, though, the browser won't show line breaks for those newline characters, because HTML doesn't work that way... that's why somebody invented the nl2br function:

$str = nl2br($str);

will create a <br> tag in $str for each newline character.

actually it will return a <br/> tag, conform with the new xhtml standards...

corporateboy

im having a similar problem but my text form posts to a script which then sends it as mail.

all the line breaks are ignored.

there is NOTHING, touching the variable from when it is sent as a text boxt to when it is put in the variable for mail sendin

eg (when text entered is variable $message)

$mailmessage = "This mail is sent by me\n";
$mailmessage .= "Dear $firstname $lastname\n\n";
$mailmessage .= "$message"
$mailmessage .= "\nto unsubscribe do this";

the \n work for the padding around $message but the $message itself comes out as a big block. Any ideas?

acidbox

corporateboy:

right before you send the message, do this:

$mailmessage = nl2br($mailmessage);

corporateboy

thanks acid but the mail sending is text, not html mail. doing that will slap a bunch of <br> tags in my mail (but I will try it)

what seems to have happenned is that none of the line breaks (new line characters) have made it through the post?

any ideas?

bobthedog

How are you sending the mail? What are you reading the resultant mail using?
Maybe try \r\n since this is defined at the standard for SMTP data.