Need feedback form comments to save to sepoerate lines - php

Question

I have a feedback form that saves to a txt file, it saves perfectly but it saves on one line. So multiple comments would be saved on one line so that saves to just one line on notepad rather than separating different comments onto different lines.
Here is my HTML
<form action="feedback.php" method="post">
<table>
<tr>
<td>Email Address:</td>
<td>
<input type="text" name="email_address" value="" maxlength="100" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Comments:
</td>
<td>
<textarea rows="10" cols="50" name="comments">
</textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
Here is my php:
<?php
$email_address = $_POST['email_address'];
$comments = $_POST['comments'];
$myfile = fopen("feedback.txt", "a") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt = 'Email: '.$email.'\nComments: '.$comments.'\n\n';
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
?>
So I need different comments to save to different line rather than just one.

Answer 1

Your \n (new line) is not working because you use apostrophe ' instead of double quotes ".
eg you have:
$txt='Email: '.$email.'\nComments: '.$comments.'\n\n';
And you need:
$txt="Email: ".$email."\nComments: ".$comments."\n\n";
EDIT
Your email address isn't being written as you change the variable name used.
e.g. You have this code:
$email_address=$_POST['email_address'];
$txt='Email: '.$email.'\nComments: '.$comments.'\n\n';
Your $txt variable is using $email however you're setting the $_POST data to variable $email_address.
Try this complete code:
$email_address = $_POST['email_address'];
$comments = $_POST['comments'];
$myfile = fopen("feedback.txt", "a") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt="Email: ".$email_address."\nComments: ".$comments."\n\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
It's a simple mistake to make, but you should try to get into the habit of copying and pasting your variable names, rather than re-typing them. This (helps) avoid typos etc, which in large code blocks & multiple files, becomes an even bigger problem.
And use your error logs - they are invaluable when coding!
In this case PHP (thus the logs) would have moaned about that $email variable not being defined, which in turn would have led you to inspect the variable and you'd have likely worked it out.

Answer 2

I Would use PHP_EOL since it's cross-platform-compatible! That means it handles Unix/DOS/Mac issues!
(Also i think you want to change the $email variable)
So insteat your line:
$txt='Email: '.$email.'\nComments: '.$comments.'\n\n';
Use:
$txt = "Email: ". $email_address . PHP_EOL . "Comments: " . $comments . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL;

Answer 3

$txt='Email: '.$email.'\nComments: '.$comments.'\n\n';
Use \r\n to make new line text file like:
$txt='Email: '.$email.'\r\n Comments: '.$comments.'\r\n';

Answer 4

You actually may use single quotes and concatenate a newline character but you'd need to write code like this:
<?php
echo 'This is a test of using a newline char.' . chr(10) .
'Did it work? It should have.';
?>
To reduce the possibility of things going wrong one should do certain checks. Did the user actually submit a form? Also, we should not assume that all data from $_POST is safe and hence I use htmlentities() for the email address and the comments, just in case a malicious user tries to slip in something they shouldn't.
The other point is that some people think that variable interpolation is slow but the ironic thing is that the more variable interpolation there is the more efficient that interpolation processing becomes. Incidentally, I changed some of the newlines by adding some and removing others so that the final result is formatted in a way that is easier to read.
<?php
if (isset($_POST) && $_POST != NULL) {
$email_address = htmlentities($_POST['email_address']);
$comments = htmlentities($_POST['comments']);
$myfile = fopen("feedback.txt", "a") or exit("Unable to open file!");
$txt="Email: $email_address\nComments:\n\n$comments\n\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
}
?>
I replaced the morbid die() with exit() since they are both equivalent language constructs; they both generate the same EXIT opcode.