addslashes and n2lbr

[QuizToon]

Hi all

 

I am having a bit of a problem understanding addslashes and n2lbr and where and when to use them.

 

I have, after much toing and froing, managed to create a small news script which displays news in the form od a newsletter on the website.  I have also done the admin system to allow me to upload news articles, edit current ones and delete old ones.

 

What I have noticed is that there seems to twice as many line breaks as there needs to be.  EG i input the text with 2 line breaks and the system uploads it and adds another one in, if I edit the article the same thing happens.

 

I am guessing I have done something wrong with either of 2 functions mentioned.

 

Please can someone just explain in real simple terms when and where I should use them, if indeed that is my problem.

 

Many Thanks

[mrMarcus]

first off, read the manual for each entry:

 

nl2br, and addslashes

 

as you will find all the info you need regarding these functions, respectively.

 

addslashes() is used to escape characters that would otherwise break a query, output to a page, and so on.  Most commonly used for escaping quotes when dealing with a database query.  For example, if you were inserting someone's name into the db where the name had an apostrophe: O'Brien, if you ran addslashes() against that, the result would be O\'Brien, and would now be safe* to put through a query.

 

Now, to draw that out of the db, you must run stripslashes against it to remove the escaping \ and to preserve the name.

 

mysql_real_escape_string is a preferred method of query character escaping as it is runtime and does not store the value being escaped with a backslashes, thus making the need for stripslashes() redundant.  Much more efficient.

 

nl2br is used to generate <br /> tags from newline \n characters, usually from data in a database which was originated from a textarea field in a form when a user hits the enter key.  Hitting the enter key generates the \n in a behind-the-scenes fashion.  And to preserve those newline breaks when displaying that data on a page, use nl2br().

 

Understand?

 

Check the manual(s).

 

*safe is such a risky term as you are never really safe.  But it's a start.

[GoneNowBye]

addslashes maeks stuff display, so it puts a \ before a ' which can prevent SQL inserts (correct me if i am wrong PLEASE)

 

nl2br turns new lines \n to <BR \>'s so you can turn a ... input from a text area to <BR> formats