[SOLVED] Detect newline in form input?

[judeddokoinu]

Suppose you have a form with a <textarea>.  When you submit the form, the php will assign the value of whatever is stored in the textarea to a variable.  How do you detect where the user had pressed the enter/return key at?

I'd like to be able to str_replace() the newlines/carriage returns in the string with html <br />'s but can't seem to determine how to detect their presence.

I currently am trying the following, and have tried all the variations of the first value \n, \n\r, \r, \r\n, but no luck in getting it detected and replaced.
[code]
$newpostbody = str_replace('\n', '<br />', $newpostbody);
[/code]

[c4onastick]

This is common in PHP. There's actually a special function for it! nl2br().

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php

All you have to do is feed the string from the textarea to it and it'll do the rest (only works for newlines '\n' though.)

[code]$htmlized_text = nl2br($_POST['textarea']);[/code]

[judeddokoinu]

Ah, very interesting.  I was getting desperate, and found that if I use double quotes instead of singles, it worked fine.  I did have to add the \r in order to get it to save to the database correctly, though, but all is well.

solution:
[code]
$newpostbody = str_replace("\r\n", "<br />", $newpostbody);
[/code]

[judeddokoinu]

c4, your code is a lot shorter than mine - I might have to try it instead.  I do hope it replaces the \r in front of my \n as well

[judeddokoinu]

Alas, it does not remove the \r as well.

[code]
$newpostbody = nl2br($newpostbody);
[/code]

I suppose I may have to stick with my longer str_replace.

And the reason I'm running it on the string and not directly on the $_POST is because I have several other replacement filters like to change <tab> into several nbsp's and such.

[c4onastick]

I don't think it does this puts a '<br />' infront of \n in the text. If that's what your data looks like and nl2br doesn't work give this a shot:
[code]$htmized_text = preg_replace('/(\r\n)/', '<br \>\1', $source);[/code]

[trq]

FYI nl2br() doesn't actually replace anything. It just inserts html linebreaks (< /br>) just before newlines in a string.

[judeddokoinu]

[quote author=c4onastick link=topic=119478.msg489419#msg489419 date=1166680707]If that's what your data looks like and nl2br doesn't work give this a shot:
[code]$htmized_text = preg_replace('/(\r\n)/', '<br \>\1', $source);[/code]
[/quote]

that preg_replace still added a line break in the saved data.  The output on-screen looks fine, but i need it converted to a single line when I place it in the database.

[c4onastick]

Oh! Ok! In that case then:
[code]$htmized_text = preg_replace('/(\r\n)/', '<br \>', $source);[/code]
That wont have the \r\n in it.

[trq]

You really should avoid storing html in the database whenever possible. What if (in the future) you want to display the data in another client besides a browser?

[c4onastick]

[quote author=thorpe link=topic=119478.msg489435#msg489435 date=1166682271]
You really should avoid storing html in the database whenever possible. What if (in the future) you want to display the data in another client besides a browser?
[/quote]How would you change the text? Would you recommend writing something to translate the text into the requested display format? (I'm curious, I've got a couple databases full of limited html, never even though twice about it.)

[trq]

[quote]How would you change the text?[/quote]

Change the text to what?

I allways leave stored data in its raw format. Then when I want display it I format it accordingly. ie, I wouldn't use nl2br until Im displaying the data, not before I store it.

[c4onastick]

Oh. I see. Duly noted. Good point.