removing too many occurencies of specific tag

[radioversion]

hi all

after doing nl2br( strip_tags( trim($_POST["f_entry"]) ) ) i insert f_entry to a database.. the beauty is that if a user has written

a row

a second row

that is what gets displayed when i fetch it from the dbase.. but if a user decides to hit "enter" loads of times in a row, it prints all those linefeeds. i'd like to set a limit so that before f_entry is inserted, it gets "cleaned" so that there are no occurencies of two or more <BR /> after each other.

is this doable? i guess it is, since php rocks 🙂 i just don't know how.

thx
/Folbert

[MrAlaska]

It is doable, but you would need to use string functions to run the string through a rinse cycle and replace each instance of successive new lines with a single new line until there are none left. There might be an easier way, but if there is I either have not encountered it or it does not come to mind.

You need to analyze the string to find exactly what pattern to look for, I can't remember if nl2br actually replaces new lines or just adds a <br /> with them but if it leaves the \n intact it would be easier to do before you convert it. If it strips them, it would be easier to do after, because different O.S.'s send different sequences for a new line.

[winterbeef]

Hello,

I think you should use a regex function:

ereg_replace($regex_find, $regex_replace, $your_string);

I would strip all the tags except the <br>'s, then use the regex function to change many <br>'s in a row into a single newline:

$newtext = nl2br(ereg_replace("(<br\s?/?>)+", "\n", strip_tags(trim($buffer), '<br>')));

You could also use the Perl-style regex, preg_replace(). Slightly different syntax.

The \s?/? would match XML-friendly <br>'s, <br/> and <br />

HTH

[radioversion]

great!

thank you both... i'll take a closer look at both your suggestions.