Disabling HTML within variables

nexgen_x

Users on my site are able to update their profiles, which are in turn displayed on a page listing all the profiles from all the users. Recently I've discovered 2 problems with the current system:

1)For advanced users, they are aware that they can use HTML tags such as within the text boxes that they use to submit their information. This, obviously, causes presentation problems, as the colours/fontfaces/sizes arn't consistent, because people are using custom tags. Now, I can cover the submit page in "DON'T FORMAT THE TEXT WITH HTML TAGS - DOING SO WILL RESULT IN A 4 MONTH BAN FROM THE DATABASE" - but better yet would be to stop them from doing it in the first place, so that everyone can keep their accounts, and my site can look presentable.

2)For people who don't know/understand HTML, their text all appears on one line because they don't use or tags. Again, I could just cover the submit page with "Use to start a new line" - but it detracts from the overall user-friendliness of the site.

So, ideally, I need to know how to remove all <> tags from a variable, or just have them not have an effect, UNLESS they are (i'll leave out to keep it simple). Or, even better, make the variable recognise where the user has hit return to start a new line, and insert tags in accordingly.

My guess is that the programming to achieve the above will be complicated, but if anyone knows how to do it, please let me know anyway, and I'll attempt to understand it 😃

Thanks a lot,

Bunkermaster

[MAN]strip_tags[/MAN]

or download phpBB and look how they do it

theeper

I think you would want to use nl2br() to turn your newline characters into HTML break tags.

Then, use strip_tags() to eliminate all tags you don't want. You can specify to leave the break tags intact.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.strings.php

nexgen_x

Thanks guys.

All I really need is for the tags to appear where there are line breaks, so I can use the function you suggested, theeper. All the html tags can go, as the formatting is done around the fields and I want it to look uniform.

Cheers.