New line in PHP output in a text file

Question

My php form which saves the output in a text file glues the result to one string like:

Name1Email1The Message1Name2Email2The Message2Name3Email3The Message3Name4Email4The Message4

But I need spaces and/or newlines. I normaly don't use PHP so I don't get it. I did't find an answer on the web, also read some Q/A here, but this didn't help me.

The Form:

<form action="mailer.php?savedata=1" method="post">
Your Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br>
Your Email: <input type="text" name="email"><br>
Your Message:<br> <textarea name="message" rows="5" cols="30"></textarea><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

The PHP

<?php
$savedata = $_REQUEST['savedata'];
if ($savedata == 1){ 
$data = $_POST['name'];
$data .= $_POST['email'];
$data .= $_POST['message'];
$file = "YOURDATAFILE.txt"; 

$fp = fopen($file, "a") or die("Couldn't open $file for writing!");
fwrite($fp, $data) or die("Couldn't write values to file!"); 

fclose($fp); 
echo "Your Form has been Submitted!";

}
?>

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 16 '12 at 06:14

As other answers state, you need to add in an end of line character after each field.

Different OS's use different line endings, though, and so a "\n" may not display as a new line on Windows, for example. As Mahdi said, you can use Windows style "\r\n" line endings, or you can use the PHP_EOL constant so that line endings appropriate to the server will be output, in which case your code would look like

$data = $_POST['name'] . PHP_EOL;
$data .= $_POST['email'] . PHP_EOL;
$data .= $_POST['message'] . PHP_EOL;

Thanks to all! I choose your answer cause the different OS argument. — Darth Severus, Oct 16 '12 at 19:03

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 16 '12 at 05:54

6

You can use "\n" to write a new line.

$data = $_POST['name'] . "\n";
$data .= $_POST['email'] . "\n";
$data .= $_POST['message'] . "\n";

Just as a sidenote, \n has to be in doublequotes. When surrounded by single quotes it won't work.

answered Oct 16 '12 at 05:54

Louis Huppenbauer

3,719
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9 years later..this sidenote is still valid. Much appreciated. – Bruce Bruce Mar 12 '21 at 19:53

Ja͢ck · Answer 3 · 2012-10-16T06:37:50.950

When you concatenate your input values like that you won't have any newlines; you can add them using the literal "\n" or "\r\n". To string them all together you can use the concatenation operator or use sprintf() like below:

$data = sprintf("%s\n%s\n%s\n", $_POST['name'], $_POST['email'], $_POST['messge']);
$file = "YOURDATAFILE.txt"; 
file_put_contents($file, $data, FILE_APPEND);

I also use file_put_contents() with the FILE_APPEND flag to append data to a file and save a few more lines of code.

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 16 '12 at 06:09

2

I usually combine New Line with Carriage Return:

$data = $_POST['name'] . "\r\n";

answered Oct 16 '12 at 06:09

Mahdi

9,247
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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 21 '19 at 00:27

Check the filter that you're using to clean form input. It may be removing the 0x0a NewLine characters from your form input.

I have text saved from a 'textarea' tag and it's correct. Using a HEX viewer, I see that each newline from the "textarea" field gets translated to hex character 0a. (decimal 10) Wikipedia lists this as the UTF-8 "newline character" or "LF." LF was short for Line Feed, from the old teletype days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8

So, the lines test test test translate to "4 65 73 74 0d 0a 74 65 73 74 0d 0a 74 65 73 74" Note the two "0a" characters in the string, which are equivalent to \n.

This wasn't apparent at first because the regular expression I was using to clean the input was replacing the 0a character with a space.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 16 '12 at 05:54

0

you'r $data variable needs to already have the \n new line characters in it.

answered Oct 16 '12 at 05:54

DiverseAndRemote.com

19,314
10
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score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Apr 06 '18 at 08:20

0

this works for me:

echo "$data"."\r\n";

edited Apr 06 '18 at 08:20

YakovL

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answered Apr 06 '18 at 06:33

May Noppadol

638
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While this code may answer the question, providing additional context regarding why and/or how this code answers the question improves its long-term value. – rollstuhlfahrer Apr 06 '18 at 07:03

score -1 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 07 '17 at 03:15

When we attempt to extract data submitted online via a Web-Form and to write the same to a text file which is placed on the web-server -- without overwriting the information already contained in the said text file, then we use the following code within the tags:

<html>
<body>
<form action="" method="">
<input value="submit">
<div>Name: <input value=""></div>
<div>email: <input value=""></div>
...           ...         ...
<div><button>Submit</button></div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The above HTML Code is coupled with the following PHP Code:

<?php
$fileName = 'fdata.txt';
$fp = fopen('fdata.txt', 'a');
 $savestring = $_POST['name'] . ',' . $_POST['email'] ;
fwrite($fp, $savestring);              
fclose($fp);
?>

But the above two Codes together lead to data that is appended and stringed together in the text file -- that is to say, every new record (set of data) extracted from subsequent Web-Forms does not begin at a new line (there is no line-break or carriage-return).

I searched the Net for a Solution to the above Issue -- as suggested on the Net, I added “\r\n” (in double quotes) and also used ‘PHP_EOL’ (without quotes) as under:

$fp = fopen('fdata.txt', 'a', "\r\n");
$savestring =  “\r\n” . PHP_EOL .  ' ' . $_POST['name'] . ',' . $_POST['email'] . 
PHP_EOL;

Yet there was no line-break at all (my web-server and my desktop use Windows). It means that there was no practicable Solution within the knowledge of anyone of the millions of Users of Net in the World. It appears that the parameter ‘a’ overrides “\r\n”, ‘PHP_EOL’ etc.

New line in PHP output in a text file

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