New Line

NZ_Kiwis

I've got a form, when submitted i want to save any new lines with the tag so it will display in the same way when retrieved later from a db. how can i do this?

dagon

mr manual say:nl2br()

NZ_Kiwis

that works for the output how do convert it to save it?

dagon

same way, you are however better to not to to store the html in the db, and format on output.

dewcansam

I like doing it like this:

$nl = "<br/>\r\n";

echo "this is a $nl new line";

then you can even store in a db as "$nl" and then upon output it will still convert it.
ideally you should set the var as a const but, then that means you have to do extra work to get it to output correctly.

NZ_Kiwis

how do a find the new line to add $nl to it?

SOMETHING LIKE?

$txt = strreplace("\n", "<br\>");

dagon

at a loss to see the benefit of this method.

you're replacing a with b then b with something else maybe a, why the extra step?

bradgrafelman

I agree with dagon - just store the data unmodified with the line breaks. If you want to translate those line breaks with " " when outputting it, then do so (e.g. with nl2br() as mentioned above).

Doing anything else is just going to a) destroy data integrity, and b) probably cause a lot more work than is necessary.

NZ_Kiwis

some data is coming from a webservice from a .net platform so it needs to be the same, so i want formatting in there.

so would str_replace("n\", " "); work?

bradgrafelman

NZ_Kiwis;10972409 wrote:
some data is coming from a webservice from a .net platform so it needs to be the same, so i want formatting in there.

That still doesn't seem to justify why you must store the data in the same format you need to use/display it.

NZ_Kiwis;10972409 wrote:
so would str_replace("n\", " "); work?

That exact code? No, that would cause a parse error. Rather than fix it, however, why not just use [man]nl2br/man as suggested?

NZ_Kiwis

because when submitted it will have n\ or r\ and when come from .net it will be so i want it to be the same.

what's the parse error there?

bradgrafelman

str_replace("n\", "<br\>")

Notice the parse error now?

By the way, the escape sequences are formed with the backslash in the beginning - see this section in the PHP manual (or the equivalent section in just about any other C-like language - it's a fairly standard string notation).

NZ_Kiwis

djjjozsi

NZ_Kiwis;10972452 wrote:
no

a parse error stopped your program. The first \ wanted to escape the following double qoutes ( " )... Why don't you learn about the urls you got before first, and come back to the program you want to sort out? You should have the basics first.