I have a text file "applications.txt" I want to show on the web using PHP, I have this line of code:
<?php
$myfilename = "applications.txt";
if(file_exists($myfilename)){
echo file_get_contents($myfilename);
}
?>
The contents of the text file looks like this:
Line one
Line two
Line three
However, on the webpage, it looks like this:
Line one Line two Line three
How do I make it display the new lines properly?
This is happening because HTML ignores more than two concurrent whitespaces and treats them as a single one. You can wrap the output in <pre> tags
echo "<pre>" . file_get_contents($myfilename) . "</pre>";
that will preserve the file as it appears but can lead to problems for files with long lines. You can also replace newlines with <br/> tags using nl2br()
echo nl2br(file_get_contents($myfilename));
HTML uses <br/> markup to make a line return, you should either do a foreach line and display a markup, or use a pre markup to disregard formatting.
Related
If i generate HTML data from MySQL using PHP like this:
/* SQL query */
while ($result = mysql_fetch_object($sql_query) {
$text = $result->table_text;
}
If i echo the result to a textarea I get correct line breaks that the user has entered in a previous <form>. For example
Code:
<textarea>$text</textarea>
Result:
These
are
row breaks
But if I echo the result to a <div> everything comes out to one line.
Code:
<div>$text</div>
Result:
These are row breaks
If I run the query in command line, it seem's to output the row breaks. But how can I generate them in a div?
Use nl2br function
echo nl2br($text);
That is because "\n" or "\r\n" have no effect when directly displayed in a div tag.
You could:
use css to set the white-space property of that div to pre or something similar to achieve what you want.
wrap <pre> tags around the $text.
use first use PHP's nl2br() to convert the line characters to html tags.
The choice is yours.
For some strange reason, inserting echo "\n"; and other scape sequence characters are not working for me, that's why I am just using <br /> instead.
The images of the results of examples in books and other documentations seems just alright. I'm currently using XAMPP and already used WAMPP with the same actual result. Why is that?
Edit:
It seems that I cannot understand the concept after comparing your answers with this:
PHP Linefeeds (\n) Not Working
Edit:
Sorry I didn't realized that the link above is referring to a php code writing to a file. I just wonder why I have these few php sample programs that uses \n even though it outputs in a webpage. Thanks everyone.
When you run a PHP script in a browser, it will be rendered as HTML by default. If the books you’re using show otherwise, then either the code or the illustration is inaccurate. You can use “view source” to view what was sent to the browser and you’ll see that your line feeds are present.
<?php
echo "Line 1\nLine 2";
?>
This will render in your browser as:
Line 1 Line 2
If you need to send plain text to your browser, you can use something like:
<?php
header('Content-type: text/plain');
echo "Line 1\nLine 2";
?>
This will output:
Line 1
Line 2
PHP Linefeeds (\n) Not Working is referring to sending output to a file rather than the browser.
You should be looking for nl2br(). This will add line breaks (<br>) to your output which will be rendered by the browser; newlines are not.
The echo "\n" is probably working, just not the way you expect it to.
That command will insert a new line character. From the sounds of it, you're using a browser to view your output. Note that if you wrote an HTML file that had a body contents that looked like:
<p>This
is
a
test </p>
The browser rendering would not include the new lines, and would instead just show "This is a test"
If you want to see the newlines, you could view source, and you'll see that the source code includes the new lines.
The rule of thumb is that if you need new lines in a browser, you need to use HTML (e.g. <br />), while if you want it in plain text, you can use the \n
<br /> is the HTML Tag for new line, whereas
"\n" is to output a new line (for real).
The browser doesn't output a new line each time the HTML file goes to the next line.
You can use the nl2br function to convert \n to <br>
As said before, HTML does not render \n as new line. It only recognizes the <br> html tag
If you are working with HTML (viewing the result in browser for example) you have to use the HTML way of linebreaks which is: <br>
/n only works if it is used as a simple text but here as we code in a html doc it takes it as a HTML text hence you can use </br> tag instead.
PHP outputs on the browser and browser only render output in HTML, any other output format will be ignored by the browser.
If you want browser to keep your standard output format as it is, you should enclose your output under HTML's <pre> tag. It preserves the formatting:
echo "<pre>";
echo "This is first line\nThis is new line";
echo "</pre>";
This will be rendered as
This is first line
This is new line
Alternatively, you can mention content type to be plain text in the header:
header('Content-type: text/plain');
echo "This is first line\nThis is new line";
This will tell the browser to render the output as plain text. And the browser will encolse the output automatically in <pre> tag.
solution is echo nl2br or=> <br>
Let's say I have the following text file:
This is the first line of the text file.
This is the second line,
and here goes the third.
When using
echo file_get_contents($_SERVER{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'} . "/file.txt");
The output is
This is the first line of the text
file. This is the second line, and
here goes the third.
How do I prevent the layout from changing?
Thanks in advance :-)
In HTML, new line characters (\n or \r\n) don't cause actual line breaks to appear in the rendered page. Here are two possible solutions:
Use the nl2br() function to convert newlines to <BR> tags. This will work for some layouts, but not for ASCII art or others that rely on multiple spaces (which are reduced to one in HTML).
echo nl2br(file_get_contents(...));
Wrap the result in <pre> tags. This will keep all layout, but can look a bit ugly. You can style <pre> tags with CSS to make them prettier, if you'd prefer.
echo '<pre>' . file_get_contents(...) . '</pre>';
Every time you are gonna use PHP, it must be done in 2 parts:
Write your page in pure HTML. Make it work as desired. Ask HTML questions if any.
Write a PHP script which produce the the same text.
An HTML tag that could help you is <pre>
Another way to tell to browser that here hoes plain text is to send appropriate HTTP header
So, it this text is the only text being displayed on this page,
header("Content-type: text/plain");
readfile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/file.txt");
I am newbie to PHP I have written the following program:
$address=array('abc#gmail.com','abc#hotmail.com','def#yahoo.com');
foreach($address as $value)
{
echo "processing $value\n";
}
If you see I have \n in the echo statement but I am not getting the output on new line.
How can I get each output on a new line?
If you are outputting this as HTML then you must of course use a HTML break <br />.
If you're working in a browser, you need to break lines with
<br>
You need to print an HTML line break instead:
<br/>
Since you are printing to a browser
\n will line break properly when you view the source, but not in the HTML display. As mentioned, you need to use the <br/> node for HTML
You may want to wrap your output in a <pre> tag as your browser is expecting HTML and is just collapsing the whitespace. The pre tag will reflect the whitespace (\t \n etc);
Alternately you can use a break tag, or wrap the data in a block display element. (eg: <p> or <div>)
I don't really get it: what's the purpose of a new line character?
If I do this:
<?php
echo "This is a test. \n";
echo "This is another test.";
?>
Code results in both sentences being in the same line. Why doesn't the \n causes the second sentence being in second line?
The sentences are each in it's own line, if I do:
<?php
echo "This is a test. <br>";
echo "This is another test.";
?>
But I have also seen people do this:
<?php
echo "This is a test. <br>\n";
echo "This is another test.";
?>
Which essentially results in the same output as the second code snippet. Someone care to explain this?
The HTML standard treats a line break as just another white space character, which is why the <br> tag exists. Note however a line break will work within a <pre> tag, or an element with the white-space:pre CSS style.
The third example is just to make "pretty" HTML: it makes it easier to "view source" and check it by eye. Otherwise, you have a big long string of HTML.
as you have observed there are different ways to create a new line.
<br />
this is not a new line character, this is an XHTML tag which means, it works in XHTML.
correctly speaking it is not a new line character but the tag makes sure, one is inserted = it forces a line break. closing tag is mandatory.
XHTML specs
<br>
this is a HTML tag which forces a line break. closing tag is prohibited.
HTML 4.1 specs
\n
is an escape sequence for the ASCII new line char LF. A common problem is the use of '\n' when communicating using an Internet protocol that mandates the use of ASCII CR+LF for ending lines. Writing '\n' to a text mode stream works correctly on Windows systems, but produces only LF on Unix, and something completely different on more exotic systems. Using "\r\n" in binary mode is slightly better, as it works on many ASCII-compatible systems, but still fails in the general case. One approach is to use binary mode and specify the numeric values of the control sequence directly, "\x0D\x0A".
read more
PHP_EOL
is a php new line constant which is replaced by the correct system dependent new line.
so the message is, use everything in it's right place.
<br> will give you a new line in the user's view; \n will give you a new line in source code, ie. developer's view.
When the html is rendered, only the "<br />" renders the break line. However the markup is much easier to read when "<br />\n" is printed, so that everything is not in one long line.
\n is code based
<br /> is HTML tag based
There is a clear distinction between the two.
Your problem is the way html is rendered. If you look in the source code, the first example will have the two lines on separate lines, but the browser does not see line breaks as breaks that should be displayed. This allows you to have a long paragraph in your source:
rghruio grgo rhgior hiorghrg hg rgui
ghergh ugi rguihg rug hughuigharug
hruauruig huilugil guiui rui ghruf hf
uhrguihgui rhguibuihfioefhw8u
beruvbweuilweru gwui rgior
That would only wrap as the browser needed it to, allowing it to be easily editable at the right line length, but displayed at any resolution.
HTML does not care about new lines in the source code, you can put it all in one line. It will only interpret <br /> as a new line. You should use an \n to beautify your HTML-output though, but the better way is to not output it with PHP, but to use it in the HTML itself and only embed PHP stuff into it, like this:
<ul id="menu">
<?php foreach ($menu_items as $item): ?>
<li>
<a href="<?= htmlspecialchars($item['link']) ?>" title="<?= htmlspecialchars($item['title']) ?>">
<?= htmlspecialchars($item['title']) ?>
</a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
That way you won't have to bother with formatting inside PHP, but you automagically have it, by design, in HTML. Also, you seperate Model-logic and View-logic from each other like this and leave the output to your HTTP Server rather than the PHP engine.
That's because you're creating HTML and view it in a browser, and whitespace is more or less ignored there. Ten spaces don't produce a bigger gap than one space, but that doesn't mean that the space character doesn't work. Try setting the content type to text/plain or look at the HTMLs source to see the effect of the newline.
The correct XHTML syntax for it would be
echo "This is the test code <br />\n";
The <br /> renders a new line onscreen, the "\n" renders a new line in the source coed
The new line character is useful otherwise, such as in a PDF. You're correct that the new line character has very little do with HTML as other people have said, it's treated as another while space character. Although it is useful inside the <pre> tag. It can also be used to format the HTML output to make it easier to read. (It's a little annoying to try to find a piece of HTML in a string that's 1000 characters wide.)
The new line character is also useful when storing data in the database. Usually you want to store the data without HTML special characters such as <br /> so that it can be easily used in other formats (again, such as PDF). On output, you want to use the nl2br() function to convert the new lines to <br />s.
The new line character is is useful for string functions.
For example:
explode( '\n' , $input );
Would split a string by a new line.
str_replace( '\n' , '<br />' , $input );
Would replace every newline in $input with a br tag.
Also because PHP also has a CLI, \n is useful for formatting:
eg.
echo 'Hello world';
Would, in the CLI, output;
Hello worldphp>
echo 'Hello world' . "\n";
would output;
Hello world
php>
Although it also has uses when writing web-based scripts, keep in mind PHP is more than a web engine; it also has a CLI where the br tag is useless.
<br /> is also useless if you're running a script from the command line.
$ php -f file.php
Output <br />$
I know not too many people use PHP from the command line, but it does come up:
file.php:
<?php
print "Output\n";
?>
At the command line:
$ php -f file.php
Output
$