getting test to save breaks in database

[smartin1017]

This is probably a real simple one for you guys, but I have a text area that saves a nio, the probalem is most people have more then a paragraph for there bio, how do I get the database to save the breaks and spaces between paragraphs and indents?

[MatthewJ]

The line breaks should be saved in the database... When you output the content, use nl2br(). That will convert the \n to break tags in the output.

 

Have never tried with indent

[flyhoney]

If you need to retain indentions as well as nl2br() I suppose you could use CSS:

 

p {
    white-space: pre;
}

[smartin1017]

I looked into that function but for soeone coming to the site and filling in info they are not going to know to put in /n. Think of a social network, you fill in all these different textareas and they always show the paragraphs with the breaks. How do they do this, I am thinking they might use javascript with php. Any ideas?

[flyhoney]

I looked into that function but for someone coming to the site and filling in info they are not going to know to put in /n. Think of a social network, you fill in all these different textareas and they always show the paragraphs with the breaks. How do they do this, I am thinking they might use javascript with php. Any ideas?

 

They dont put in "\n".  Whenever you press the Enter key on your keyboard, that is where the "\n" comes from. So people filling out a bio would just hit Enter, which would take them to the next line, like this

 

and the nl2br() function will make sure that, when you display the text, the \n's are preserved.

 

Does that make sense?  \n is a whitespace character, that means that nobody sees it.  Spacebar is represented by \s, and tabs are represented by \t, they are also whitespace characters.