How to add newlines or carriage returns to description on facebook graph API

Question

It sounds like a pretty simple question but I can find the answer no where.

I have a post from a textarea. and I want to use the current facebook php library to do the following...

$description = $_POST['textarea_description'];

//magic happens

$attachment =  array(
'access_token' => $token,
'message' => "$title",
'picture' => "$image_url",
'link' => "$action_link",
'name' => "$action_label",
'caption' => "$caption",
'actions' => $action_json,
'description' => "$description",
 );

$facebook->api('/'.$my_uid.'/feed', 'POST', $attachment);

and have it work. Right now it seems to ignore

<br> <br /> \n \r \n\r \r\n

but I am sure I might have done something to screw up my testing.. I just need to replace 'magic happens' with something that works. Right now it just converts all of the newlines I am throwing at it to spaces.. Pretty frustrating. Someone on the facebook forums suggested addslashed() of all things... but that did not seem to work for me

Thanks, -FT

Check the facebook api to see if newlines are even supported in the description field. Chances are that they are stripping them out otherwise. — Fanis Hatzidakis, Oct 13 '10 at 11:37
I would be surprised if it is possible, they are very strict to what is allowed in wall posts (nothing is allowed actually) — serg, Oct 13 '10 at 15:48

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 12 '12 at 13:26

I write simple function which add   after every row text.

public static function fbLinkDescriptionNewLines($string){
    $parts = explode("\n", $string);
    $row_limit = 60;

    $message = '';
    foreach($parts as $part){
      $str_len = strlen($part);
      $diff = ($row_limit - $str_len);

      $message .= $part;

      for($i=0; $i <= $diff; $i++){
        $message .= '&nbsp;';
      }
   }
    return $message;
}

NOTE: in your string you must use \n for new lines.

This worked for me, but i need to add a $message .= ' '; before the return — marcostrama, Apr 21 '14 at 22:33

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 22 '10 at 15:48

If your lines of text are long enough, and you replace each space in each line with a non-breaking space (" ") and put a regular space at the end of the line, then this will have the effect of forcing each line onto a new line, e.g.

This is some example text etc. This is some example text etc. This is some example text etc.

If any lines are too short, you can pad them out with   chars

How to add newlines or carriage returns to description on facebook graph API

2 Answers2

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