Inserting Data "AS IT IS TYPED" in a textbox...

[Sharif]

Is there any code out there that will insert data in a database from a textbox exactly as it is typed? Sort of keep all the tabs and line breaks that were in the text box instead of after hitting submit, it doesn't wrap together to become a giant box of text?

[kevinsequeira]

i think it does insert it exactly the way it is typed. what you have to do is when u display it , use the function nl2br() to get back the formatting.
try it and see if it works

reg
kevin

[Sharif]

HEY,

That works but not all the way. It does display the line breaks properly, but the spaces between text and stuff are not the same.

[stolzyboy]

well that's cuz html limits you to one space unless you are using non-breaking spaces

not sure if this will work or not, but you can try a str_replace on \t and replace it with say 5 non-breaking spaces

[Sharif]

so everytime I want a tab, in the text box I put \t, and in the echo for the text box results I put:

echo nl2br(str_replace(\t,     )database output);

??

[stolzyboy]

i guess i'm just assuming that if you hit tab in the textarea it is storing \t in the database, you can't see that obviously, but, then you could use

<?
$textareavar = str_replace("\t", "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;", $textareavar);
echo $textareavar;
?>

never tried this, but it may work, as far as hitting space bars in the textarea, i don't know what you are gonna do there

[HalfaBee]

You should use htmlentities() to change all HTML chars to their html equiv.

This should always be done to user input to stop malicious code from being entered when it is displayed.

HalfaBee

[laserlight]

Well, I think that all you need to do is store normally, i.e. escaped with addslashes() if needed.

Then when you output, simply use htmlspecialchars() or htmlentities(), placing the output in <pre> and </pre>

[stolzyboy]

as this is not his problem, you are both correct with your suggestions, he, at this point, isn't worried about output, except for formatting problems