Saving Text the Way it Was Inputted

spyderman

I built a form where I can input newsletter content. Basically, the field is a big textarea and it gets stored in a MySQL table when saved. My question is, how can I get it to save my text the way I entered it? For instance, when I enter two paragraphs, like below:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.

With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.

It gets displayed, like the text below, without the paragraph formatting when I retrieve it and display in another page.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.

rincewind456

Pass the data through nl2br when you retrieve it.

Ravenous

The problem with nl2br() is that it removes the structure of the document. Sure, it looks as it should, but really, that should be two bits of text both wrapped in tags. That's my problem. I know it's possible, but have yet to figure it out.

rincewind456

What about using preg_replace() to replace the newlines with , with the appropriate tags at the start and finish of the section.

bpat1434

You don't have to actually use tags around every paragraph.... actually... you can use Divs and s too.

You could use [man]nl2br[/man] upon submission. Then, when you retrieve it, that will be what it shows up as. If you want to have the tags, you can do something like this:

<?php
$text = $_POST['textfield'];
$to_db = '';

$paras = explode("\n", $text);
foreach($paras as $para)
{
  $to_db = '<p>'.$para.'</p>';
}
?>

Then just insert "$to_db" where you want the text to be....

It can also be ported to a function like:

function nl2p($input, $sql=FALSE)
{
  $out = ''; // Empty the output variable
  $paras = explode("\n", $input);
  foreach($paras as $para)
  {
    $out .= '<p>'.$para.'</p>';
  }
  // If it's for SQL, let's escape it for security
  if($sql){ $out = mysql_real_escape_string($out); }

  return $out;
}

$query = "INSERT INTO faketable (name, email, comments) VALUES ('Someone', 'Blackhole@domain.com', '".nl2p($_POST['comments'], TRUE)."')";

~Brett

Ravenous

That will work given that each new paragraph is seperated with 2 or more newline characters. But what happens when you have some text run right into a list?

here is some text. Notice that there are no newlines before the beginning on this list:<ul>.......</ul>

There should be a after the colon. The problem comes when the regexp formats the data within the list, too which is not the desired effect. :bemused:

bpat1434

No, you can have an unordered list inside of a paragraph. Where are you coming up with these rules? They don't make sense.

Anyway, the function I wrote was just for a type of quick fix. It's not meant to be the all-inclusive fix for anything. You can modify it, or just bite the bullet and learn how to parse the data as it is returned from mySQL. You can wrap tags around the result within the while loop.

The original question was: How can I keep the formatting of my code when it gets injected into the database?
The answer was/is: [man]nl2br[/man]

Easy as pie, case closed.

~Brett

Ravenous

I don't know about unordered lists, but ou certainly can't nest a definition list within a paragraph. At least that's what the W3C validator is telling me on my script.

Last New Year’s Eve, Dean ... happened in 2005 (not necessarily chronological):
<dl>

Line 39, column 3: document type does not allow element "dl" here; missing one of "object", "ins", "del", "map", "button" start-tag .

bpat1434

Then use a <div> tag. that would sovle the problems.....

~Brett

Ravenous

Yes it would, but that degrades the semantics of the markup from a very specific tag to a more generic <div>. Eh... No worries. I'm certain I can sort it out given enough time.

bpat1434

Well:
-- You know what tags aren't allowed in tags:
---- ul, ol, dl
-- You can split by line
-- You can search in-front of an array

With this knowledge you can create a function that takes each line and searches for the "disallowed" tags. If found, get the strpos() of the tag. Then, at that position, cut it, and insert a .
Save that to the output, then search forward in the array for the key of the value with the </??> tag. When found, implode those elements.
Then, start a new and the search over again...

I'm not the greatest with recursive functions, but it could be done....

~Brett