Problems with newlines (nl2br) - php

My code works as follows:
Text comes to server (from textarea)
Text is ran through trim() then nl2br
But what is happening is it is adding a <br> but not removing the new line so
"
something"
becomes
"<br>
something"
which adds a double new line. Please help this error is ruining all formatting, I can give more code on request.
Creation of post:
Shortened creation method (Only showing relevent bits) Creation method:
BlogPost::Create(ParseStr($_POST['Content']));
ParseStr runs:
return nl2br(trim($Str));
Viewing of post:
echo "<span id='Content'>".BlogPosts::ParseBB(trim($StoredPost->Content))."</span>";
ParseBB runs:
$AllowedTags = array(
// i => Tag, Tag Replacement, Closing tag
0 => array("code","pre class='prettyprint'",true),
1 => array("center","span style='text-align:center;'",true),
2 => array("left","span style='text-align:right;'",true),
3 => array("right","span style='text-align:left;'",true)
);
$AllowedTagsStr = "<p><a><br><br/><b><i><u><img><h1><h2><h3><pre><hr><iframe><code><ul><li>";
$ParsedStr = $Str;
foreach($AllowedTags as $Tag)
{
$ParsedStr = str_replace("<".$Tag[0].">","<".$Tag[1].">",$ParsedStr);
if($Tag[2])
$ParsedStr = str_replace("</".$Tag[0].">","</".$Tag[1].">",$ParsedStr);
}
return strip_tags($ParsedStr,$AllowedTagsStr);
Example:
What I see:
What is shown:

It's because nl2br() doesn't remove new lines at all.
Returns string with <br /> or <br> inserted before all newlines (\r\n, \n\r, \n and \r).
Use str_replace instead:
$string = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), "<br />", $string);

Aren't you using UTF-8 charset? If you are using multibyte character set (ie UTF-8), trim will not work well. You must use multibyte functions. Try something like this one: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mbstring.php#102141
Inside <pre> you should not need to call nl2br function to display break lines.
Check if you really want to call nl2br when you are creating post. You probably need it only on displaying it.

Related

preg_replace all line breaks between specific BBCode tags

I'm programming a wiki with BBCode-like editing syntax.
I want the user to be allowed to enter line breaks that resolve to <br> tags.
Until here there's no problem occuring.
Now i also have the following lines, that should convert into a table:
[table]
[row]
[col]Column1[/col]
[col]Column2[/col]
[col]Column3[/col]
[/row]
[/table]
All those line breaks, that were entered when formatting the editable BBCode above are creating <br> tags that are forced to be rendered in front of the html-table.
My goal is to remove all line breaks between [table] and [/table] in my parser function using php's preg_replace without breaking the possibility to enter normal text using newlines.
This is my parsing function so far:
function richtext($text)
{
$text = htmlspecialchars($text);
$expressions = array(
# Poor attempts
'/\[table\](\r\n*)|(\r*)|(\n*)\[\/table\]/' => '',
'/\[table\]([^\n]*?\n+?)+?\[\/table\]/' => '',
'/\[table\].*?(\r+).*?\[\/table\]/' => '',
# Line breaks
'/\r\n|\r|\n/' => '<br>'
);
foreach ($expressions as $pattern => $replacement)
{
$text = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $text);
}
return $text;
}
It would be great if you could also explain a bit what the regex is doing.
Style
First of all, you don't need the foreach loop, preg_replace accepts mixed variables, e.g. arrays, see Example #2: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php
Answer
Use this regex to remove all line breaks between two tags (here table and row):
(\[table\]([^\r\n]*))(\r\n)*([^\r\n]*\[row\])
The tricky part is to replace it (See also this: preg_replace() Only Specific Part Of String):
$result = preg_replace('/(\[table\][^\r\n]*)(\r\n)*([^\r\n]*\[row\])/', '$1$4', $subject);
Instead of replacing with '', you replace it only the second group ((\r\n)*) with '$1$4'.
Example
[table] // This will also work with multiple line breaks
[row]
[col]Column1[/col]
[col]Column2[/col]
[col]Column3[/col]
[/row]
[/table]
With the regex, this will output:
[table] [row]
[col]Column1[/col]
[col]Column2[/col]
[col]Column3[/col]
[/row]
[/table]

Keep all html whitespaces in php mysql

i want to know how to keep all whitespaces of a text area in php (for send to database), and then echo then back later. I want to do it like stackoverflow does, for codes, which is the best approach?
For now i using this:
$text = str_replace(' ', '&nbs p;', $text);
It keeps the ' ' whitespaces but i won't have tested it with mysql_real_escape and other "inject prevent" methods together.
For better understanding, i want to echo later from db something like:
function jack(){
var x = "blablabla";
}
Thanks for your time.
Code Blocks
If you're trying to just recreate code blocks like:
function test($param){
return TRUE;
}
Then you should be using <pre></pre> tags in your html:
<pre>
function test($param){
return TRUE;
}
</pre>
As plain html will only show one space even if multiple spaces/newlines/tabs are present. Inside of pre tags spaces will be shown as is.
At the moment your html will look something like this:
function test($param){
return TRUE;
}
Which I would suggest isn't desirable...
Escaping
When you use mysql_real_escape you will convert newlines to plain text \n or \r\n. This means that your code would output something like:
function test($param){\n return TRUE;\n}
OR
<pre>function test($param){\n return TRUE;\n}</pre>
To get around this you have to replace the \n or \r\n strings to newline characters.
Assuming that you're going to use pre tags:
echo preg_replace('#(\\\r\\\n|\\\n)#', "\n", $escapedString);
If you want to switch to html line breaks instead you'd have to switch "\n" to <br />. If this were the case you'd also want to switch out space characters with - I suggest using the pre tags.
try this, works excellently
$string = nl2br(str_replace(" ", " ", $string));
echo "$string";

PHP textarea into database

I'm using textarea to get data that I insert into a database.
I'm using htmlspecialchars() to get rid of the single quotes and double quotes but it doesn't convert new lines into something so I'm left with a very long piece of code that doesn't have new lines and looks messy.
I've checked the manual but I can't find how to convert it.
How would I do this?
EDIT:
My intended output is the same as what the user inputted.
So if they inputted into the textarea...
Hi
This is another line
This is another line
It would store into the database like...
Hi\r\nThis is another line\r\n This is another line.
or something like that.
Then when I echo it again then it should be fine.
Anthony,
If you are referring to when you get it back out and you want it to look nice, and you aren't putting it back into a textarea, you can use the mythical function nl2br() to convert new line characters into HTML characters.
$data = 'Testing\r\nThis\r\nagain!\r\n';
echo nl2br($data);
This results in:
Testing
This
again!
I believe what you are looking for is
nl2br($string);
That will convert the returns to <br> tags
I will also give you this script that has worked well for me in the past when nl2br does not.
$remove = array("\r\n", "\n", "\r", "chr(13)", "\t", "\0", "\x0B");
$string = str_replace($order, "<br />", $string);
It should be:
<?php
addslashes( strip_tags( nl2br( $data ) ) );
?>
addslashes : will escape quotes to prevent sql injection
strip_tags : will remove any html tags if any
nl2br : will convert newline into <br />

Passing string to a Javascript function does not work

I am trying to pass a string to a javascript function which opens that string in an editable text area. If the string does not contain a new line character, it is passed successfully. But when there is a new line character it fails.
My code in PHP looks like
$show_txt = sprintf("showEditTextarea('%s')", $test_string);
$output[] = '<a href="#" id="link-'.$data['test'].'" onclick="'.$show_txt.';return false;">';
And the javascript function looks like -
$output[] = '<script type="text/javascript">
var showEditTextarea = function(test_string) {
alert(test_string);
}
</script>';
The string that was successfully passed was "This is a test" and it failed for "This is a first test
This is a second test"
Javascript does not allow newline characters in strings. You need to replace them by \n before the sprintf() call.
You are getting this error because there is nothing escaping your javascript variables... json_encode is useful here. addslashes will also have to be used in the context to escape the double quotes.
$show_txt = sprintf("showEditTextarea(%s)", json_encode($test_string));
$output[] = '<a href="#" id="link-'.$data['test'].'" onclick="'.htmlspecialchars($show_txt).';return false;">';
Why don't you try replacing all spaces in the php string with \r\n before you pass it to the JavaScript function? See if that works.
If that does not work then try this:
str_replace($test, "\n", "\n");
Replacing with two \ may work as it will encapsulate.
I would avoid storing HTML or JS in PHP variables as much as possible, but if you do need to store the HTML in a PHP variable then you will need to escape the new line characters.
try
$test_string = str_replace("\n", "\\\n", $test_string);
Be sure to use double quotes in the str_replace otherwise the \n will be interpreted as literally \n instead of a new line character.
Try this code, that deletes new lines:
$show_txt = sprintf("showEditTextarea('%s')", str_replace(PHP_EOL, '', $test_string));
Or replaces with: \n.
$show_txt = sprintf("showEditTextarea('%s')", str_replace(PHP_EOL, '\n', $test_string));

Line breaks from textarea and mysql dont appear in html

How can I make text appear on diff lines in html?! They appear on diff lines in my text area when output from mysql, and also appear on diff lines inside mysql. But in the web page its all on one line. How can this be solved?
Use:
string nl2br ( string $string [, bool $is_xhtml = true ] )
It can handle \n, \r, \r\n or \n\r linebreaks and replaces them with a <br />
Example:
$yourText = "This is line one.\nThis is line two.";
$yourText = nl2br($yourText);
echo $yourText;
This will result in:
This is line one.<br />This is line two.
Link to the manual for more information.
Use the PHP nl2br function:
$string = "hello \n world";
$string = nl2br($string);
It's quite self-explanitory: \n gets replaced with <br />
Replace Linebreaks with <br>
str_replace(.N, '<br>', [element]);
You can use <pre>..Your text..</pre> tag for that.

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