Help saving text formatting in data.

[Kraft]

Well right now I have it set up so that a form lets you input text through a <textarea> tag, and then submits it to a database cell with of the 'text' type. When I do this, though, it strips all the added lines and stuff and just makes everything into one big paragraph. Is there any way that I can make it keep new lines that are entered into the text area?

[aaron_karp]

It depends on the medium into which you plan to put the text that has been entered.

If you plan to spit it out onto your website somewhere else, then you'll want the newline characters to turn into <br> and <p> tags. The PHP ereg_replace function is handy for this.

$newtext = ereg_replace("\r","",$newtext);
$newtext = ereg_replace("\n\n","</p><p>",$newtext);
$newtext = ereg_replace("\n","<br />",$newtext);

If you plan to do something else with the text, then you'll need to consider a different solution. Let me know what you have in mind and I'll see what I can do to help.

[Kraft]

Actually it will be spitting it out on a webpage, for a news system I am working on. Right now you can see the system in play at http://www.pspnetwork.com/news.php Click on the bottom news thing.

I think what you are talking about will probably work for me. Does the textarea send /n's and similar formatting when I hit the submit button?

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by aaron_karp
The PHP ereg_replace function is handy for this.

$newtext = ereg_replace("\r","",$newtext);
$newtext = ereg_replace("\n\n","</p><p>",$newtext);
$newtext = ereg_replace("\n","<br />",$newtext);

If you plan to do something else with the text, then you'll need to consider a different solution. Let me know what you have in mind and I'll see what I can do to help. [/B]

Let's don't forget nl2br()...