<textarea> issues

[Anon]

I have a <textarea> form element in which members post comments about certain programs, much like a guestbook. These comments are stored in a MySQL DB, then displayed on a page. When someone enters text as:

"this is my comment, blah blah

My Name
Company Name
URL"

I want those two lines to show up that way on the site. How can I accomplish this? My only thought was that the data was being stored in the DB with "\n"'s, and I thought I could replace the \n with "<BR>" but that didn't work. Any help appreciated!

[Anon]

Okay, update...

I was able to get some stuff working with the \n, etc. When the user hits [RETURN] inside the textfield, I determined this created a "\n"...so before storing in the Database, I convert \n to "NEWLINE", or some such text. Then when the comments are displayed, NEWLINE converts to <BR>. Still one issue...

When a user enters a comment into the form, it seems some of them just don't realize that the text wraps automatically. So when they get to the end, they hit a return...so on the site, the comments ends up looking like:

Hi, my name is XXX
and this is a comment
I am posting on the site
as you can see
all the lines are
really short and look
stupid.

So, can anyone tell me how they've resolved this in the past?

[Anon]

You can't get both of what you want unless you can read the users' minds. (I.e. is your script going to distinguish between hard-returns that really should be there and those that shouldn't?) But it helps with the non-word-wrap-aware crowd if you make the text area as wide as possible. At least that way the stupid looking short lines aren't that short. phpbuilder.com itself is a good example of how to do it, IMO--even if you do enter at the end of each line, they aren't too stubby.

[Anon]

I was afraid of that...I lengthened the textarea field, and that does seem to help. Spoze I could just post something near the comments field telling them not to hit return unless they wanted a Carriage Return.

Still open to any possible workarounds if anyone is enlightened!

Thanks Kirk!

[Anon]

You will have to use the WRAP="VIRTUAL" tag for your textarea for it to break lines automatically, then store whatever you get back from the user as it is in the DB and then use something like ereg_replace("\n", "<BR>", $your_text) to display it.

You might also want to use a function such as htmlentities() to make sure the users can't break your page with 'funny' HTML.

Martin

[Anon]

or you could just use the simple nl2br() function that replaces \n with <BR>. Also if people are ever going to edit these entries, its best not to use nl2br before inserting, rather use it when displaying the data. That whay if they can edit there entry, they wont see the <BR>'s

Derek

[Anon]

I think you want the wrap="virtual" option
for textarea, or, I think that <pre></pre>
tags inside the textarea may work too. I did something like this a while back. www.abbott-library.com/obits is where the
quicky code is running.

[Anon]

I always thought it was
"wrap=PHYSICAL"
that I should be using? What is the difference between that and virtual?

[Anon]

40 column textarea, text line is 55 characters.

Example 1. wrap=virtual. The textarea will show the text line in two lines, wrapping at the 41st character. When sent to the server, the text line goes as one complete line, no newline characters.

Example 2. wrap=physical. The textarea will show the text line in two lines, wrapping at the 41st character. When sent to the server, the text line actually goes as two lines, with a newline character after the 40th character.

Use a combination of nl2br() and ereg_replace to fix your problem. Use wrap=virtual and then use nl2br() when sending the form info to the server/database. When you populate a page using this data, the <br> is already there. If you are allowing the user to edit, use the ereg_replace() function before showing the text in a textarea, replacing <br> with \n. This will work and is relatively simple.

HTH,

Jim Hawley

[Anon]

test

[Anon]

I want to know more about the textfield and text area issues. I want to know about some strange entries in the textfield n text area that could make my form behave diferently.
I would like to know about specific characters or some script code that could be entered into text area or field n would change the look n feel of the form or would give some abnormal or unexpected results.
Or may be sends to some other url etc.....