[RESOLVED] Formatting text for emails

Studio381

Hi,
I'm working on an application where a user inputs text into a text area field.

This is then stored in the mysql database as a text field.

At some future point this text is sent as a part of an email to another user.

I've got it "working", but the text in the email comes essentially as one long string.

Any suggestions as to the best way to handle this to make the output more appealing to the eye ?

Thanks,
John.

halojoy

hi.
Depends on how you store the text, how you handle and \n newlines.

There is a function you may have a look at [man]nl2br[/man]
Newline to break( ).
You may want to run your text through this.
Either before you store it in DB.
Or before you display your text after pulling it from DB.

🙂

bpat1434

Typically you'd want to save the information into the database as the user enters it (meaning that it will have \n \t characters for new-lines and tabs respectively). Then, when you retrieve it, that's when you do the filtering to replace \n with or depending upon the mail you're sending.

Also, if you're just sending a plain-text email, \n should show up as a line-break whereas will show up as a litteral tag since plain-text doesn't recognize HTML formatting.