Add character to every line of text?

[ziycon]

I have a function that takes a piece of text from the database and puts it into a textarea, I'm trying to put a symbol like '>' beside very line of text thats taken from the database and put into the textarea to show its taken from the database, can anyone help?

[Dormilich]

if you have defined the number of rows, then you can add before every (rows – 2) characters your indicator "> ".

[ziycon]

The problem is, its a textarea and when the first line is populated it goes to the next line so i don't know when it will go to the next line!?

[Atli]

Hi.

First of all, you can not put the symbol ">" into your HTML output without causing all sorts of problems. It is a reserved character.
Use the HTML symbol ">" instead. (Without the quotes.)

I'm not quite getting what you are trying to accomplish here.
Do you want to put ">" before every line of text inside your textbox?
If so, try adding the HTML symbol after each new-line character.
(Replacing all occurences of "\n" with "\n>" should do that. Again, without the quotes)

If not, please elaborate.
Remember, we like code examples and error messages ;]

[ziycon]

I understand about the >. Ok I'll try and explain it better. I have a textarea on a page, when the page loads it get a a string, it can be a small or large string, the string is put into the textarea like below:

echo '<textarea name="body" cols="75" rows="10">'.getText().'</textarea>';

Now, the text is wrapped automatically to fit into the textarea so ther is no new-line characters that I'm aware of.

The textare is a message reply box so the text being taken from the database is the received message, i need to add '>' to show its the received text so when a user enters new text you can tell the difference.

Hope this makes it a bit easier too understand.

[Atli]

Ok, so you want the old message, the one from the database, to be sent along with the new text?

Somewhat like:

> This is some text from the database.
> A text that should appear quoted.
> Which means each line should start with
> a ">" symbol.

This is a new message.
Something the current use would type
into the textarea.

If so, then you would just have to add the > symbol on ever new-line.
If there are no new-lines (if the text is one long line), you could split it into lines using the wordwrap function, and have the function add the > symbol on every new line.

[ziycon]

Heres the function i was trying to use but with no luck:
Everytime data is entered into the database it adds a <p></p> to every line, if you get me?

function formatReplyText($msg) {
    $msg = str_replace("<p>&gt;&gt;","&gt;&gt;&gt;",$msg);
    $msg = str_replace("<p>&gt;","&gt;&gt;",$msg);
    $msg = str_replace("<p>","&gt;",$msg);
    $msg = str_replace("</p>","<br /><p>",$msg);
 
    //$msg = wordwrap($msg, 12, "<br />\n");
    //$msg = str_replace("&gt;&gt;","&gt;&gt;&gt;",$msg);
    //$msg = str_replace("&gt;","&gt;&gt;",$msg);
    //$msg = str_replace("<p>","&gt;",$msg);
 
 
 
    //$msg = str_replace("</p>","<br />\n",$msg);
 
    return $msg;
}

[Atli]

Is the return value of that supposed to go inside the <textarea>?

If so, then you should not be using HTML tags in it.
The value of a textarea should be formatted like normal text, not HTML.

So, if your message were something like:

First line
Second line
Third line

And you did something like this to it:

<?php
function formatText($text) {
  $text = wordwrap($text, 50);
  $text = htmlentities($text, ENT_NOQUOTES, "UTF-8");
  $text = "&gt;" . str_replace("\n", "\n&gt;", $text);
 
  return $text;
}?>

It would display the text in lines, each line no longer than 50 characters and each line prefixed with a > symbol.

If each line is also encapsulated in <p>..</p> tags, you might want to simply remove them by using the str_replace function, passing each of the tags with an empty string.

@ziycon
This is a very very bad thing to do. You should never format your data before putting it into the database.
What if you ever decide to change the format? You would have to update you entire database to fit your new format, which puts it at risk of corruption and all sorts of other problems.

The database should always store the original text. Whatever alterations you need to make before it is displayed on your front-end application should be done on the way out.

[ziycon]

Its showing up like so when i got to reply:

>

Test message.

I'm using TinyMCE as the editor in the textarea and TinyMCE adds <p></p> on every line.

[Atli]

If your using the function I just posted, that would mean you are passing it an empty string. (Just made that mistake myself just now... misspelled the variable :P)

This:

<?php
function formatText($text) {
  $text = wordwrap($text, 70);
  $text = htmlentities($text, ENT_NOQUOTES, "UTF-8");
  $text = "&gt; " . str_replace("\n", "\n&gt; ", $text);
 
  return $text;
}
 
$message = <<<TEXT
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed elementum. Pellentesque mattis. Vestibulum nisl tortor, blandit ut, tincidunt at, fermentum at, massa. Praesent dictum semper justo. Fusce et massa. Sed nisi tellus, venenatis vel, condimentum nec, iaculis sollicitudin, turpis. Ut sit amet urna eget eros ullamcorper ullamcorper. Integer volutpat. 
TEXT;
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <textarea cols="72" rows="10"><?php echo formatText($message); ?></textarea>
    </body>
</html>

Gives:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <textarea cols="72" rows="10">&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed
&gt; elementum. Pellentesque mattis. Vestibulum nisl tortor, blandit ut,
&gt; tincidunt at, fermentum at, massa. Praesent dictum semper justo. Fusce
&gt; et massa. Sed nisi tellus, venenatis vel, condimentum nec, iaculis
&gt; sollicitudin, turpis. Ut sit amet urna eget eros ullamcorper
&gt; ullamcorper. Integer volutpat. </textarea>
    </body>
</html>

[ziycon]

Got it working fine without TinyMCE being used. One last thing about it, how would i go about adding a blank line under the reply text to seperate it from the new message?

[Dormilich]

adding two consecutive newline characters (e.g. "\n\n")

[ziycon]

@Dormilich
Tried this so many ways but its just putting an empty line under every line instead of just one empty line after all the text? I really appreciate all your help.

[Dormilich]

@ziycon
where do you put the double newline? if I assume you use Atli's function, putting it right after the conversion has finished should do it.

function formatText($text) {
// code ...
    return $text . "\n\n";
}

[ziycon]

Got it working perfectly, thanks ever so much!