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Need some help with line breaks in MySQL database.

I created a simple IT helpdesk for my companies Intranet page. My question is how can I send the text field to the MySQL database and preserve the line breaks? For example..

If I put some text
in my text box, it

looks like this by hitting
the enter key.

When I display the text field on the records page it all comes out as one paragraph. If I put <br /> in the text box at each line break then its correct but I dont want my computer illiterate coworks to have to remember to do that for each line break. Can anyone help? I am using Dreamweaver CS3 to generate the code if that matters to anyone.

Thanks for any help!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Joe Wu

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SOLUTION

steelseth12

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Joe Wu

As a brief example below to demonstrate how to use the function.
Essentially when the "enter" key is pressed, a newline is inserted and represented by \n.

<?php
echo nl2br("foo isn't\n bar");
?>
 
// outputs foo isn't<br /> bar

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Aleksandar Bradarić

> If I put <br /> in the text box

You've got a `nl2br()` function for PHP which does that for you. You can also take look at `addslashes()` and `stripslashes()` functions.

graphxdiva

ASKER

Great nl2br worked. One last question.. If the person hits enter/return twice to leave an empty line, the form strips the empty line prior to putting it into the DB, how can I stop that so the empty line remains?

Joe Wu

hmm it shouldn't do. it should be stored into the database ok, as it shouldn't strip the empty line (it should preserve it).

graphxdiva

ASKER

No if I create a new or edit an existing record.. in my text field enter

some

text

it displays

some
text

Joe Wu

i did a quick test, and it preserves this, but i was using the TEXT field type for my database field. Is this what you are using?

graphxdiva

ASKER

You mean text as your datatype in the table? I was at medium text, switched to text and same thing.

graphxdiva

ASKER

Well I created a new db to test it on again and it worked as you said.. Not sure why it didnt on the other but oh well. Thanks for your help!

Joe Wu

weird thing! no problems glad to help :)

skellstaff

I have the same problem in my database. The fields are also type text. After using nl2br, I get both newlines and <br /> entries in the database and this causes the html code to break when drawn from the database table. I found that the extra newlines, on new data entry, went away when using type char or varchar as the database field type.