HTML_QuickForm TextArea Newline Problem

[Stretchwickster]

Hi there,

I'm hitting a wall of blanks with this after much experimentation and googling!

I have a page which allows "comments" to be entered via an html textarea. If the user has included a carriage return in the text they have typed this is stored in the MySQL field as "\r\n". I should point out that the form is built and rendered using HTML_QuickForm. When I come to view a frozen (i.e. read-only) version of the form, the stored "comments" field looks like this: "First line of text\r\nSecond line of text".

In the textarea.php file (i.e. the HTML_QuickForm file which controls the rendering of a textarea), the getFrozenHtml function is called and attempts to use the nl2br function to convert all the newlines to <br /> tags, as shown in the line below.

$html = nl2br($value)."\n";

However, after using this function the "\r\n" remains in the string. I've done a var_dump before and after the nl2br call and $value contains exactly the same string throughout.

Does anyone know how to solve this one?

Your advice would be much appreciated.

Clive

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"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." (Paul Ehrlich)
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To get the best answers from this forum see: faq102-5096

 

[jpadie]

does this replacement code work?

 function getFrozenHtml()
    {
        $value = $this->getValue();
        if ($this->getAttribute('wrap') == 'off') {
            $html = $this->_getTabs() . '<pre>' . $value."</pre>\n";
        } else {
            $html = nl2br($value)."\n";
        }
        return htmlspecialchars($html) . $this->_getPersistantData();
    } //end func getFrozenHtml

 

[jpadie]

actually, i don't think that's the right answer.

can you point us to a live site with this problem? i'd like to check out the html source.

 

[sleipnir214]

Stretchwickster:
What version of PHP are you running? nl2br() replaces "\r\n" with "<br />" quite nicely under PHP 5.2.1



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[sleipnir214]

But as a general rule, before inserting any user input into MySQL, you should use mysql_escape_string() on it.

Also, what is the setting of your magic_quote_gpc()?



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[Vragabond]

However, after using this function the "\r\n" remains in the string.

According to PHP Manual, nl2br does not replace \n with <br />, it inserts <br /> before \n. So, the string should still contain the newline element, but since HTML is white-space agnostic, that newline will simply be ignored (it only helps if you look at the source code). Why exactly do you want to get rid of the newlines in your string?

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[sleipnir214]

What I'm thinking is that he's got magic_quote_gpc set to "on", which automatically escapes "\r"s and "\n"s. So when he runs nl2br() against the string, the function never sees the two characters 0x0D 0x0A but rather sees the four-character string '\r\n'.



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[Stretchwickster]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys. I've been diverted onto another project for the time being. However, I will be returning to this sometime soon and will respond properly in due course.

Clive

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." (Paul Ehrlich)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To get the best answers from this forum see: faq102-5096