Formatting text from a database

[Studebaker]

This is probably a no-brainer, but is there anyway to format text queried from a database in such a way that there are returns within the text?

[drew010]

str_replace("\r\n", '', $dbstr);

maybe thats what you are looking for.

[Studebaker]

Unfortunately, that didn't work. I know that the \n stands for a hard return, but what does the \r stand for?

[drew010]

the \r is a carriage return, the \n is a newline. windows uses \r\n unix \n. try removing the \r maybe its got none in the db.

[drew010]

oh btw, i kinda left out that str_replace returns a new string, so you should do
$dbstr = str_replace('replaceme', 'replacement', $dbstr);

[aspect]

I always user nl2br for such formatting when needed to display .. 🙂 Converts Newlines in DB fields into <br> tags

eg.
echo nl2br($dbstr);

don't do
$dbstr=nl2br($dbstr);
or your string will be littered with <br> tags

[Studebaker]

I tried nl2br() and str_replace(), but none of those functions worked. If it helps, here is the code: (the database query and the display function, which in this file is just a definition)

function get_lg_img_details($posid)
{
	if(!$posid)
		return false;

db_connect();

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM imagetest 
					   WHERE posid = '$posid'");

if(!$result)
	return false;

if(!mysql_num_rows($result))
	return false;

$result = db_result_to_array($result);

return $result;
}

function display_lg_img($picdis_array)
{
	if(!is_array($picdis_array))
	{
		return false;
	}
	else
	{
		foreach($picdis_array as $row)
		{
			echo '<img src="../'.$row['imgsrc'].'">'
				.'<br /><p class="stext"><b>'.$row['jobname'].'</b></p>'
				.'<br /><p class="stext">'.$row['imgdescrib'].'</p>';
		}
	}
}

*Note, the string I am trying to format is located in the "imgdescrib" field, which in this example is located in the last line in the foreach() loop in display_lg_img().

[aspect]

I don't think you can nl2br direct to an array value.. try this

foreach($picdis_array as $row) 
        { 
      $img_desc=$row['imgdescrib'];
      $img_desc=nl2br($img_desc);
            echo '<img src="../'.$row['imgsrc'].'">' 
                .'<br /><p class="stext"><b>'.$row['jobname'].'</b></p>' 
                .'<br /><p class="stext">'.$img_desc.'</p>'; 
        } 

This is a bit of extra code but should prep the $img_desc variable ready for succesfull echo.....

[Studebaker]

Thanks for the help, aspect. That change in the foreach() loop did the trick.

[aspect]

No probs m8,

I'm new fairly new to PHP myself, but learning fast thanks to the help of the wise PHP gurus here at PHP Builder.. 🙂