Question

HTML Textarea line break in JSP page

Asked by: inditrozen

Hallo Experts,

I have a text stored in database which I need to display in the textarea.

Text stored in db is like below.

some text \n second line \n bla bla

Now if I want to display it in the text area in my JSP page it gets displayed with \n in the text. How can I display the line break in place of the \n. I tried replacing it with br. Please see html code below.

Can somebody help

TIA
Regards

<html> 
<body>  
<textarea rows="10" cols="30" > The cat was playing in the garden.<br>secondline\n thirdline <br/> sdfksfklsdl </textarea> 
</body> </html>
                                  
1:
2:
3:
4:

Select allOpen in new window

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-01-13 at 06:47:38ID24047646
Topics

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

,

Java Server Pages (JSP)

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
12

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. jsp textarea
    i am new to jsp.i have a question. i have a output.txt looks like this: aaaa bbbb ccccc when my jsp read it and put it into textarea it is changed to: aaaabbbbcccc how to fix it? thanks. <%@ page import="java.io.*" %> <% String s= " "; if...
  2. jsp textarea size
    can anyone tell me wat is the size limit for the textarea when post/get jsp. n is there any solution for this problem.. thanks a lot...
  3. Parsing a textarea
    Hi, I am trying to use a textarea to get a list of numbers from the user: 123 456 When the page is posted, I want to parse the textarea into, in this case, two strings, 123 and 456. This is how I am trying to do it (txtaPNs is the name of the textarea): <c:out value=&q...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-13 at 09:54:20ID: 23365298

You have to actually put the newlines in the string that prints from your JSP, not escaped \\n, which it looks like you must have done.

Notice in the above example, if you replace the "\n" with actual newlines in a text editor, and display the page, then the textarea has the newlines.

The <br/> tag is not recognized within textarea, so that's not a good solution.  It's the right thing to do, however, when you want to display the text when it is not in the input textarea.  In that case, you would want to convert all of your newlines in the db field into <br/> -- it looks as if you only converted some of them in the example you posted.

 

by: inditrozenPosted on 2009-01-13 at 10:55:07ID: 23365947

Thanks for your answer. Sorry but I do not get what is exactly want suggested here.

Could you please correct the code snippet posted.

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-13 at 12:25:10ID: 23366878

Would you post the JSP code that results in the above HTML?  Then it will be easier for us to see how you're getting the data from the database, and how you're placing it in the textarea.  That in turn will give me a place to edit to show you alternative ways of doing it.

 

by: inditrozenPosted on 2009-01-14 at 00:27:48ID: 23370761

                                  <tr>
                                          <td colspan="2" class="text"><br/>
                                              <textarea class="disable" disabled>${bean.text}</textarea>
                                          </td>
                                      </tr>
   Here is the JSP code. EL Expression bean.text reads the data from bean(session).
                             

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-14 at 06:26:39ID: 23372869

Great.  Where is the code where the value of bean.text is filled from the database?  That's where the different code would have to be.

 

by: inditrozenPosted on 2009-01-14 at 07:29:16ID: 23373620

It is done using ibatis. iBatis reads the database filed and set it inside the bean property. bean.text.

But before showing it inside JSP textarea I can manipulate the String. If you tell me what this String should contain for displaying linebreaks.
 \n \\n or <br>

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-14 at 09:20:55ID: 23375045

That's too bad.  iBatis makes some things easier, but as soon as you have to step outside the box, it's hard to fix.

Can you post what the data looks like in the database?  Then I can determine if iBatis is causing the problem.

The problem is that the HTML you showed above is not normal for a string with line breaks in it.

If, indeed, the string is as you said, then you can change the "\n" sequence to a real line break something like this:

<%
  String origText = bean.getText();
  String goodText = origText.replaceAll("\\\\n","\n");
%>

Then in your JSP page, put something like:
<textarea class="disable" disabled><%=goodText%></textarea>

By the way, the JSP you posted does not match the HTML you posted.  Are you sure you're dealing with the right code?

 

by: rrz@871311Posted on 2009-01-14 at 11:56:04ID: 23376752

Did you try using a scriplet ?  What output do see for the following JSP ?  

<%
  String dbText = "some text \n second line \n bla bla";
  String dbText2 = "some text \r\n second line \r\n bla bla";
%>
<html> 
<body>  
<form>
   <textarea name="textbox" rows="4" cols="100" >some text \n second line \n bla bla</textarea> 
   <textarea name="textbox2" rows="4" cols="100" ><%=dbText%></textarea> 
   <textarea name="textbox3" rows="4" cols="100" >some text \r\n second line \r\n bla bla</textarea> 
   <textarea name="textbox4" rows="4" cols="100" ><%=dbText2%></textarea> 
</form>
</body> 
</html>

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-14 at 12:01:46ID: 23376820

rrz@871311:  If you look at the posted HTML and JSP, inditrozen already has examples of various strings being displayed in the textarea.

The question is how did a valid newline (assuming that there was an original valid newline) turn into the string "\n" in the database.

And if inditrozen cannot show the code for that from iBatis for us to fix, then what workaround can he do to change the "\n" string in the value from the database into an actual newline on the HTML page.  Which is the code I posted above.

 

by: rrz@871311Posted on 2009-01-14 at 12:47:42ID: 23377302

Hi mrcoffee, I am sorry if I have misunderstood  inditrozen's question.
But in the question he posted
>Text stored in db is like below.

>some text \n second line \n bla bla  

So, I think the newlines are there in the db text.   He just needs to use java to read them.  That is why I posted my code to demonstrate that.  
mrcoffee>into an actual newline on the HTML page  
no,  inditrozen  posted
>I have a text stored in database which I need to display in the textarea.

Please run my demo code and look at the source code in browser.

 

by: rrz@871311Posted on 2009-01-14 at 12:56:43ID: 23377400

We need to know what
${bean.text}  
displays.

 

by: mrcoffee365Posted on 2009-01-14 at 13:15:27ID: 23377614

He posted what the bean.text displays in his original question.  If there were newlines in the code from the db, then there would not be "\n" text in the output in the HTML page.

Or, iBatis reads the text from the db, and automatically converts the actual newlines into "\n" strings.  I don't know what iBatis does, but an output string with "\n" in it is clearly wrong at some point.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...