Post text from a text area - php

I have a form where a user types paragraphs into a text area and then it takes them to another page after they submit. How can I pass whatever they typed to the page after they submit? The text area might have linebreaks and if I use a query string to pass the data, it gives me an error. This is my current code to pass the field:
<?php
if(isset($_POST['form']))
{
$title = $_POST['title'];
$body = $_POST['body'];
header("SubmitForm.php?title=$title&body=$body");
?>
<html>
...html form...
It doesn't work when the text area has line breaks in it.

I would suggest installing a wysiwyg editor to make this easier for you, but i assume that would add some time for the learning curve.
The simplest tips I can give you is to set a CSS attribute for your textarea: white-space:pre so that when it gets submitted, all line breaks get sent as well.
On your server side, you would need to use the nl2br() function, so that when it gets saved on your DB or wherever you store them, all line breaks are converted to HTML breaks.
For your additional reference, I had a similar question like this last year.

You really shouldn't be putting anything that long in a query string in the first place. Look into using sessions to store data across pages instead.
(This is assuming I understood the question right)

urlencode the data in order to pass it via query string.

Related

Textarea content to database

I have this textarea called personalInfos where i fill the infos in following format :
<p><span class="white">1966 - '69</span><br/> text .... </p>
When i submit it to database, it gets saved ok, same format. When i retrieve the code from database to admin textarea it gets filled ok.
My only problem is on front end where i get displayed the code as text not rendered as html code. So basiclly i see it on the page like this :
<p><span class="white">1966 - '69</span><br/>
Most likely you display fetched code parsed processed by htmlentities() or similar function. This is in most cases the way to go to avoid planting i.e. html in comments. So simply stop doing this after fetching (or insert - depends where you do so) and your content will be outputed as literaly HTML and properly processed by web browser.
You should have a look at htmlspecialchars_decode()
Example
$str = '<p><span class="white">1966 - \'69</span><br/> text .... </p>';
echo htmlspecialchars_decode($str);
Also make sure to escape the single quotes as well.

Get raw code from Comments in ExpressionEngine

How can I get the raw code of a comment in ExpressionEngine (frontend)?
The thing is this: If a comment contains Code or HTML like [quote]-Tags, the ee-native {comment}-Tag renders this as <blockquote>Life is like a box of… … but how can I get the raw code like [quote]Life is like a box of…?
I'm currently working on a Quote-Feature (frontend/JavaScript) for native EE comments. Till now I've worked with jQuery.text() or .html() … but both ways you get no tag (.text()) or html-tags (.html()).
Isn't there a way to get the raw comment code (for example into a data-attribute or script-tag) to later use with JavaScript?
Edit (1): I've tried SQL — is this the only/best way to do this?
<blockquote data-raw="{exp:query sql="SELECT exp_comments.comment AS comment_raw FROM exp_comments WHERE exp_comments.comment_id = {comment_id} "}{comment_raw}{/exp:query}">
{comment}
</blockquote>
Edit (2): The SQL works fine, but if there is a " inside the raw comment code, the whole thing breaks because the browser thinks this is the closing quote of the «data-raw»-attribute :-/ Is there a Way to 'mask' all characters? (" and ' and < and > etc.)
Edit (3): I now use a <script>-Tag to insert the {comment_raw}-code, this way the characters do not disturb.
You'd probably be better off retrieving the raw comment via an ajax call rather than adding a query for every single comment on the page. You'd avoid the performance hit and wouldn't need to worry about storing large strings in data attributes. I'd probably do something like this:
Create a new 'get_comment' template containing the {exp:query} tag with WHERE comment_id = '{segment_X}'
When a user hits the reply/quote button use jQuery.get() to send a request to your get_comment template, passing in the comment_id based on a data-commentid attribute on the reply button.
Update your input's value with the .get() response.

about nl, br and security while working with textarea and mysql in PHP

I'm getting data from my textarea with the following code
$about_me=mysql_real_escape_string(nl2br($_POST['about_me']));
which
1. Receives data, using $_POST.
2. nl2br makes brakes so If I echo this code to user he will see if there were new lines.
3. mysql_real_escape_string to secure code from mysql injections before entering it to database.
So if I echo this code everything works fine.
But If I edit it again through textarea, php goes to mysql gets data, puts it to textarea and I see <br> signs...
How can I get rid of them while editing my text again in textarea ?
How can I get rid of them while editing my text again in textarea ?
Stop using nl2br(), of course. It's entirely wrong here.
You use nl2br() when you want to output data that contains linebreaks to HTML, not when you want to store it in the database. Store data unchanged, format it for viewing.
If you output it into a <textarea> you don't need to use it either, since textareas display linebreaks (whereas HTML in general does not). For the textarea you need htmlspecialchars(), but apparently this is already happening - otherwise you would not see literal <br> showing up.
<?php
function br2nl($string){
$return=eregi_replace('<br[[:space:]]*/?'.
'[[:space:]]*>',chr(13).chr(10),$string);
return $return;
}
?>
Use this while getting data from database and before printing into textarea .
http://php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php
Check examples on this page

Loading multiline text from database to TextArea

I have some multi line text saved in MySql database (VARCHAR 255). When i load it, and process it using standard php function "nl2br", it echoes fine (multi line). But, when i load multi line text from database, make it "nl2br" and then send it to javascript (so it gets displayed in textarea), it won't be displayed! What's wrong?
echo "<SCRIPT>FillElements('".$subject."','".$text."');</SCRIPT>";
P.S.
FillElements function:
function FillElements(Sub,Txt)
{
document.getElementById('txtSubject').value=Sub;
document.getElementById('txtMessage').value=Txt;
}
textareas don't actually store the contents in an attribute like value in the same manner as input elements. They actually store the contents in in between the <textarea> and </textarea> tags. Meaning that the contents is actually treated as CDATA in the document.
<textarea>
This is my Content
</textarea>
Produces a text area with "This is my Content" as the contents.
The implication of this is that you cannot use the code you have to alter the contents of a textarea. You have to alter the innerHTML property of the textarea. I have set up a simple example here:
http://jsfiddle.net/wFZWQ/
As an aside, since you are populating the fields using PHP on the creation of the page, why not merely fill the data in the HTML markup, this seems like a long way round to do it.
Also, since you don't appear to be using it, have you seen [jQuery][1] it abstracts alot of things out, so instead of typing document.getElementById("the_id") to get an element you can use CSS selectors and merely write $("#the_id") to get the same element. You also get a load of useful functions that make writing javascript mucxh easier.
[1]: http://jquery.com jQuery
Newline tags (<br />) don't cause actual new lines in <textarea>.
You can pass the "real" newlines (\n) to your <textarea>, though.
I created a fiddle for that.
EDIT: For the updated FillElements code:
$subject = "String\nWith\nMultiple\nLines";
printf('<script type="text/javascript">FillElements(%s)</script>',
json_encode($subject)
);
My guess is that your HTML source code looks like this:
<script>FillElements("foo","foo
bar
baz");<script>
Correct?
In JavaScript, strings cannot span multiple lines...

Send <p> tags and simple HTML formatting through a form via PHP

so I need the user to write a review about an article or book and send it to a DB via PHP but with some basic HTML formatting.. I mean, I have a form , when the user writes the review, the data is sent but without any kind of formatting, If the user want to write in a new line, the text is sent like plain text, I need to get also those new line breaks and simple stuff.
I know how to use PHP and DB connection, I just need to know how to get those new line breakes and stuff..
Use nl2br
Just before printing on the screen data from DB. It replaces \n (new line) as <br>
I recommend storing the data as plaintext, and adding the formatting on the way out. This way if you want to change the way it is formatted then you don't have to update every row in the database.
you can use nl2br() if you just need to newlines to be formatted, and a search-and-replace for anything else.
Have you considered using an existing 'plain text to markup' solution, like Markdown?
It (and others like it) allow your users to write plaintext reviews that will be sensibly formatted. (like stackoverflow uses!)
The PHP function nl2br() basically takes every new line your user enters via the form and converts the new line code to a <br> tag.
An example of using this would be:
$text = nl2br("This is text \nThis is a new line of text");
This would create the following code in your database:
This is text<br>This is a new line of text
When the user hits enter in the form textarea, PHP will pick this up as \n.

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