Problem with displaying formatted text.

[jeddiki]

I use a form to write an article and then save it into the mysql table.

I use this to save it:

$Db_profile = safe_sql($_POST['x_profile']);

and the function safe_sql is:

// Make variable SQL safe
function safe_sql( $value )
{
     $value = strip_tags(trim($value));
 
    // Stripslashes
    if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
        $value = stripslashes($value);
    }
    // Quote if not integer
    if (!is_numeric($value)) {
        $value = mysql_real_escape_string($value);
    }
    return $value;
} // End of Function
 

I save it with a normal insert:

$sql = "UPDATE clients SET 
         profile   = '$Db_profile',
         last_date = '$today'
 
         WHERE user_id = \"{$_SESSION['expert']}\" ";
 
         mysql_query($sql) or die("could not execute PROFILE update query". mysql_error());
 

When I come to display the article all the sentences just get pushed together,the line breaks have al gone.

I use this to display it:

<div class="hot04">
 <p><?php echo "$profile"; ?></p>
</div> <!-- End div:hot04 --> 
 

The strange thing is, when I look at the table data it still contains the line breaks so it must be my display method that is causing the problem.

What am I doing wrong ?

[Markus]

HTML won't take a newline character (\n) and create a new line with it - it will in the source code, but not the live code. You need to convert these into a html tag (<br />). Luckily, there is a standard PHP function that does this for you (nl2br()). Just simply use this function on your output.

 
$text = "These\n will\n appear\n on\n new\n lines";
 
echo nl2br($text);
 
 

[jeddiki]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks,

So I can just do:

<p><?php echo "nl2br($profile)"; ?></p>

or maybe a 2 step would be better

$Sh_profile = nl2br($profile);

later
<p><?php echo "$Sh_profile"; ?></p>

Do I need the double quotes ?
( I am never quite sure )

[Dormilich]

the first code won't work because of the quotation marks (PHP doesn't look for functions in a string)
in the third code you can omit the quotation marks, because all you want to print is the variable.

which of the two ways you implement depends on your personal liking.

@jeddiki
If you're not sure about something, refer to the PHP manual, it usually gives good explanation and plenty of examples.
PHP: echo - Manual

[Markus]

Markus (with a K) ;]

Double quotes: functions will not be parsed inside them, variables, however, will be parsed.

So, the second option you show will work.

[Dormilich]

note:

echo myFunction();

only works, if the function has a (printable) return value.

[jeddiki]

Thanks for your help,

So it seems that the textarea and the mysql dtatbase both like
the line break /n/r style and will record them invisibly,
but the HTML page needs to have these output converted <br> or <br />

One more this that is confusing me.
When using the texarea to write an article how can I add bold
and italics so that they will save in the database and then
display correctly when I output them to an HTML page ?

[Dormilich]

@jeddiki
probably the best is to add some tags, that will be converted to the appropriate HTML tags (be it <span>, <b> or <i>). make sure you sanitize your input before putting it to DB or the HTML page.

[Markus]

@jeddiki
Check out BBCode.

[Dormilich]

@Markus
note: PHP provides an extension to parse BBCode.

[jeddiki]

Thanks, I am checking out how I can get the bbCode extension for my server.

Looks like what I need :)