Help with Formating using PHP and MYSQL

franklin664

I have a webiste that uses at textarea for input, which is then submitted to a mysql database for storage. Then i output from the mysql to another page. Using this code:

$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo "<p class='Bodys'>".nl2br($row'Announcement'])."</p>";

The only problem is it seems like it takes out all of the spaces.
Like if someone puts:

This is_________a_______good_thing.
where the underscores are spaces. I couldn't put just spaces because this forum has the same problem as me.The html just ignores the extra spaces.

It will show up on the output page as:

This a good thing.

If I look at the database it is stored with the spaces and if i put the variable into a textarea it keeps the spaces. But I don't really want to put it in a textarea. Is there a way to stop this. I tried using this:

$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo "<p class='Bodys'><pre>".$row'Announcement']."</pre></p>";

but then i get just one long line.

Thanks for any info

dbchip2000

This is a web browser issue, and is normal to all browsers. It will only display one space even if there are two, twenty, or two hundred. You can use a non-breaking space if you want to have an actual displayed space. It is an ampersand (&) and the following text (without the quotes) "nbsp;" (it won't show if I put them together to show you) and if you replace it with your multiple spaces your text would look like
This is        a     good   thing

One thing to note is that this is a non-breaking space, meaning that it will cause the screen to scroll since the browser will not split it up to fit on multiple lines if necessary. You can place a normal space every so many to avoid this

dalecosp

Well, the obvious kluge would be:

echo "<p class='Bodys'>".str_replace(" ", "&amp;nbsp;", nl2br($row'Announcement']))."</p>";

franklin664

Thanks that worked great.

franklin664

I think I might have spoke to soon. This fixed my problem with having spaces in the post but now the text doesn't wrap properly, if you type a long line into the textarea it will wrap in the textarea but when i display it, it doesn't wrap the text even if i set the table cell to a fixed width. How can i get the text to wrap properly. Here is the code:

  <td valign='top' width="100%" >
    // print out the announcements
  $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
  echo "<p class='Bodys'>".nl2br(str_replace(" ", "&nbsp;",$row['Announcement']))."</p>";
  </td>

dbchip2000

using dalescop's code

echo "<p class='Bodys'>".str_replace("&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;","&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ",str_replace("  ", "&nbsp;", nl2br($row'Announcement'])))."</p>";

I changed it to every two spaces equals a non-breaking space and then every five non-breaking spaces add a space. Read my last post's second paragraph and try the coding