[SOLVED] Displaying paragraphs in textbox

[fri3ndly]

Hiya

 

I have a database table with a row containing text in paragraphs.

 

I have a textfield in an admin control panel that will bring up that text for editing, but I do not want it to display <p></p> where paragraphs are, I want it to display as it would on a webpage in paragraphs instead to make it easier for edititng.

 

Can someone help me achieve this? I have tried strip tags, but this just makes all of the text one paragraph.

 

Thanks

[Aureole]

If you're wanting to show "<" and ">" etc. inside a textarea, I believe you need to convert them into their HTML entity counterparts. Hope that helps.

[willpower]

i think that he is trying to remove them, either use str_replace or integrate a rte(rich text editor)

[fri3ndly]

Im trying to remove the tags, but have the text display as formatted, is this possible without using an html editor?

 

If using str_replace, what do i replace the <p> tags with?

[Aureole]

Try something like:

 

<?php
str_replace( '<p>', '', $v );
str_replace( "</p>", "\n", $v );
?>

...where $v is the content you want to show in the textarea. I'm not sure if "\n" will work, if not just change the second parameter of the second str_replace to ""... but I added the "\n" there so that... well if you didn't then I think it'd be all crumpled up.

[fri3ndly]

Thanks, I can see how that could work, but it seems to be displaying the paragraphs tags.

 

Is there a way to reverse a function like this:

 

function formatString($string)
{
     $x_string = explode("\r\n\r\n",trim($string)); // explode on double carriage returns
     $string = str_replace('<p></p>','','<p>' . implode('</p><p>',$x_string) . '</p>');
     return $string;

}

 

This function will make sure that if paragraphs are entered in a textbox, the <p> tags are included, so I thought there must be a way to reverse it?

 

[fri3ndly]

bump 

[fri3ndly]

Just incase this helps anybody else, I found a solution to the problem, although its probably not the best thing to do, it works!

<?php
function nl2p($your_text) {
 return "" . str_replace("</p><p>", "\n\n", $your_text) . "";
}
?>

 

Then, where you need to format text for a textbox display call the function like this:

<?php echo strip_tags (nl2p($your_text)); ?>