How to show hard returns the same in email

bkirkpatrick

I know there has to be a simple solution for this but how do I get the "hard returns" in my html form to show as hard returns and not "white spaces" in my email? Using "Question: $questionField"

Thanks,

Brendan

Weedpacket

If it's HTML then you'd use HTML tags.

traq

are you talking about newlines in your form (the html markup) or in the form submission (the text the user wrote in a textarea)?

bkirkpatrick

traq;11000513 wrote:
are you talking about newlines in your form (the html markup) or in the form submission (the text the user wrote in a textarea)?

I would like to be able to WYSIWYG via the form that is submitted. Meaning that if someone types the below in a single form field:

Item #1 - Orange 25.25
Item #2 - Red 47.12
Item #3 - Blue 63.78

I would like to see the exact same thing in my email. However, when I get it, it looks like this (all on one line):

Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78

The Hard Returns / Carriage Returns that the user entered on the HTML form have been removed and replaced with white spaces.

bradgrafelman

bkirkpatrick;11000516 wrote:
The Hard Returns / Carriage Returns that the user entered on the HTML form have been removed and replaced with white spaces.

No they haven't. At least, replaced isn't the word I'd use. When HTML documents are rendered, then yes, duplicate whitespace characters are ignored unless they are enclosed in a <pre> ... </pre> block.

So, either use <pre>...</pre> tags to preserve the exact formatting of the text (e.g. without removing extra whitespace), or convert the line break characters into their HTML counterparts, entities. For the latter, see [man]nl2br/man.

bkirkpatrick

Tried the nl2br but can figure out how to do it with my variable alone $questionField. The <pre> </pre> has no effect on it.

traq

bkirkpatrick;11000522 wrote:
Tried the nl2br but can figure out how to do it with my variable alone $questionField. The <pre> </pre> has no effect on it.

Can you show us your code?

bkirkpatrick

<?php

/* These are the variable that tell the subject of the email and where the email will be sent.*/

////////////$emailSubject = 'Customer Has a Question!';

//////////$emailSubject = "BLL Score - " . $nameField . ": " . $emailField;
///////////$emailSubject = "BLL Score - . $nameField;"
$emailSubject = "BLL Score - " . $nameField . ": " . $nameField . " (" . $emailField . ")";


$mailto = 'TEST@email.com';

/* These will gather what the user has typed into the fieled. */

$nameField = $_POST['name'];
$emailField = $_POST['email'];
$questionField = $_POST['question'];

/* TEST CODE FOR GODADDY
$body = <<<EOD
<br><hr><br>
Name: $nameField <br>
Email: $emailField <br>
Question: $questionField<br>


EOD;

$headers = "From: $emailField\r\n"; // This takes the email and displays it as who this email is from.
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n"; // This tells the server to turn the coding into the text.
$success = mail($mailto, $emailSubject, $body, $headers); // This tells the server what to send.

?>

bkirkpatrick

<?php

/ These are the variable that tell the subject of the email and where the email will be sent./

////////////$emailSubject = 'Customer Has a Question!';

//////////$emailSubject = "BLL Score - " . $nameField . ": " . $emailField;
///////////$emailSubject = "BLL Score - . $nameField;"
$emailSubject = "BLL Score - " . $nameField . ": " . $nameField . " (" . $emailField . ")";

$mailto = 'TEST@email.com';

/ These will gather what the user has typed into the fieled. /

$nameField = $POST['name'];
$emailField = $POST['email'];
$questionField = $_POST['question'];

/* TEST CODE FOR GODADDY
$body = <<<EOD
 <hr> 
Name: $nameField 
Email: $emailField 
Question: $questionField

EOD;

$headers = "From: $emailField\r\n"; // This takes the email and displays it as who this email is from.
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n"; // This tells the server to turn the coding into the text.
$success = mail($mailto, $emailSubject, $body, $headers); // This tells the server what to send.

traq

Either approach should work just fine:

$nameField = $_POST['name'];
$emailField = $_POST['email'];
$questionField = nl2br( $_POST['question'] );

$body = <<<EOD
<br><hr><br>
Name: $nameField <br>
Email: $emailField <br>
Question: $questionField<br>
EOD
;

$nameField = $_POST['name'];
$emailField = $_POST['email'];
$questionField = $_POST['question'];

$body = <<<EOD
<br><hr><br>
Name: $nameField <br>
Email: $emailField <br>
Question: 
<pre>
    $questionField
</pre>
<br>
EOD
;

you should, however, be sanitizing your user-submitted data (i.e., [man]strip_tags/man or [man]htmlentities/man).

bkirkpatrick

Both codes return:

Question: Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78

They should not be on a single line and were not inputted on a single line.

bradgrafelman

Can you do a [man]var_dump/man on $questionField and show us the output?

bkirkpatrick

bradgrafelman;11000546 wrote:
Can you do a [man]var_dump/man on $questionField and show us the output?

Here's the email output:

var_dump (Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78 )

bradgrafelman

Er... no, I mean call the function [man]var_dump/man in your PHP script and show us the output that function generates.

bkirkpatrick

I wrote it just like this: var_dump ($questionField)
Is there some other way? It's a single TextArea field.

bkirkpatrick

var_dump (Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78 ) is the output for var_dump ($questionField)

bradgrafelman

No, it is not. The manual page for [man]var_dump/man shows the type of output that function generates.

Are you calling the function [man]var_dump/man, or are you simply putting the string "var_dump($questionField)" inside of $body?

bkirkpatrick

I have been to the var_dump link and learned nothing about "where" to put it. I am putting it in the body. Again, where is it supposed to go? I put it outside the body and got the Web Browser result:

string(67) "Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78 "

traq

bkirkpatrick;11000560 wrote:
string(67) "Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78 "

That is what we were looking for.

If you view source on the page, does that display in a single line, or are there line breaks?

(i.e., do you see this:

[font=monospace]string(67) "Item #1 - Orange 25.25
Item #2 - Red 47.12
Item #3 - Blue 63.78 "[/font]

or this:

[font=monospace]string(67) "Item #1 - Orange 25.25 Item #2 - Red 47.12 Item #3 - Blue 63.78 "[/font]

?)

Alternatively, run this

print strpos( $questionField,"\n" );

and show us the output.

[edit]

actually, the string length (67) would seem to indicate that there are newlines... what OS are you using?

bkirkpatrick

It prints the second example (ie. on one line).

I tried the print code but get the following error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PRINT....

I am Using Windows XP but the form is run off of Godaddy which is running a linux