PHP and the textarea field

[cozzy1984]

Hi, just a quick question. I've got a description field on a form and have it to inserted into a text mysql field.

 

Problem is when i am displaying the data in a table with an echo statement. It doesn't output i the same way it was typed in. For instance it doesn't take new lines when i had done so we typing into the textarea. Is there a better way of doing this, possibly storing it as some other type in the database.

 

Also there is a problem in that if the user typed in a long continuous word without spaces, it makes the table i am displaying them in really wide and ruins the design. Is there a way round this also?

 

Would appreciate any ideas.

[mpharo]

lets see your code for the textarea and an example of the output code....

[schilly]

My CSS isn't great but you should be able to make the table wrap any extra long words.

 

Also newlines \n won't work in the rendered html page but will work in the source code. (Not positive)

[drewbee]

The textarea passes a new line break on entering;

 

When you are displaying the data entered from the textarea, try wrapping the function nl2br() around the textarea data. This will convert every new line to a <br>

[marcus]

*to an HTML break

[drewbee]

lol, whoops. Doesn't this forum properly convert html? haha

[richardw]

try investing preg_replace to search the field and break and hyphenate long or mistyped words

 

<?php

$result = "OneTooManyHighlights and the start of a sentance break to prevent css distortion breakingstylestyle";
$result = preg_replace("/([^\s]{14})/","$1 ",$result);
echo $result;

?>

 

There is a forum here on Regular Expressions that might be worth exploring. The limitation on this routine is that it doesn't trap for emails or links. If that is part of your text, you will have to expand the regex. Also, don't forget the earlier nl2br() for those extra lines

[schilly]

ah right. nl2br. forgot about that one.

[cozzy1984]

Cheers lads,

 

i now have when adding the advert:

$description = nl2br($_POST['description']);

 

and when displaying it my code is:

echo "<td colspan='2' height='60' valign='top'>".substr($description,0,150). "...</td>";

 

Which limits the character count to 150 i think and then puts ... at end.

I would prefer this to stop at word count rather than character count as it can stop in middle of a word, if anyone new code for this i would appreciate it.

 

However it still can be ruined by someone typing a contiuous long word, as it'll make the table long and upset the whole design.

[schilly]

However it still can be ruined by someone typing a contiuous long word, as it'll make the table long and upset the whole design.

 

You can use CSS and add:

 

word-wrap: break-word;

 

to your class and it will break up any big words.