Converting
into a new line for use in a text area

Question

If I have a variable:

$var1 = "Line 1 info blah blah <br /> Line 2 info blah blah";

And a text area:

<textarea>echo $var1</textarea>

How can I get the text area to display a new line instead of displaying the text on a single like with a   in it?

Edit: I have tried the following:

<textarea class="hobbieTalk" id="hobbieTalk" name="hobbieTalk" cols="35" rows="5" onchange="contentHandler('userInterests',this.id,this.value,0)"><?php

$convert=$_SESSION["hobbieTalk"];
$convert = str_replace("<br />", "\n", $convert);
echo $convert;

?></textarea>

However the text area still contains the br tags in the lines.

[I found this answer to be useful.](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2494754/opposite-of-nl2br-is-it-str-replace) Didn't seem to match up with any of the answers above. — digifrog, Jun 28 '17 at 15:20

score 103 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 30 '20 at 15:02

103

Try this one

<?php
    $text = "Hello <br /> Hello again <br> Hello again again <br/> Goodbye <BR>";
    $breaks = array("<br />","<br>","<br/>");  
    $text = str_ireplace($breaks, "\r\n", $text);  
?>  
<textarea><?php echo $text; ?></textarea>

edited Mar 30 '20 at 15:02

answered May 15 '11 at 16:42

Mobilpadde

1,871
3
22
29

12

thank you everyone: please note if you store this string in your db using converted html tags you must put: $breaks = array("
","
","
","
"," "," "," "); cheers all – someguy May 16 '11 at 17:45
3

$text = str_ireplace($breaks, "", $text); worked better for me! :-) – bestprogrammerintheworld Jan 11 '16 at 07:59
@bestprogrammerintheworld for this $text = str_ireplace($breaks, "", $text); your can use `strip_tags($text)` – Naumov Feb 04 '16 at 10:51
@Naumov this will strip all tags from string, not only $breaks – Manuel Feb 10 '16 at 08:42
@ManuelDallaLana In question write what you need echo string in `<?php echo $var1 ?>` it means hi need only text no html entities. – Naumov Feb 10 '16 at 08:55
When writing text file, you can use PHP_EOL (it will add \r\n or \n depending on the platform(windows or linux) $text = str_ireplace($breaks, PHP_EOL, $text); – Ludo Oct 24 '18 at 14:59
It's a bad idea to replace HTML tags as if they are text constants. What if we get ` ` or `
` – Oleg Jun 06 '19 at 14:31

score 18 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 30 '15 at 16:07

i am use following construction to convert back nl2br

function br2nl( $input ) {
    return preg_replace('/<br\s?\/?>/ius', "\n", str_replace("\n","",str_replace("\r","", htmlspecialchars_decode($input))));
}

here i replaced \n and \r symbols from $input because nl2br dosen't remove them and this causes wrong output with \n\n or \r .

Jonathan · Answer 3 · 2016-02-04T10:47:17.460

The answer by @Mobilpadde is nice. But this is my solution with regex using preg_replace which might be faster according to my tests.

echo preg_replace('/<br\s?\/?>/i', "\r\n", "testing ");

function function_one() {
    preg_replace('/<br\s?\/?>/i', "\r\n", "testing<br/><br /><BR><br>");
}

function function_two() {
    str_ireplace(['<br />','<br>','<br/>'], "\r\n", "testing<br/><br /><BR><br>");
}

function benchmark() {
    $count = 10000000;
    $before = microtime(true);

    for ($i=0 ; $i<$count; $i++) {
        function_one();
    }

    $after = microtime(true);
    echo ($after-$before)/$i . " sec/function one\n";



    $before = microtime(true);

    for ($i=0 ; $i<$count; $i++) {
        function_two();
    }

    $after = microtime(true);
    echo ($after-$before)/$i . " sec/function two\n";
}
benchmark();

Results:

1.1471637010574E-6 sec/function one (preg_replace)
1.6027762889862E-6 sec/function two (str_ireplace)

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 16 '14 at 16:12

Here is another approach.

class orbisius_custom_string {
    /**
     * The reverse of nl2br. Handles <br/> <br/> <br />
     * usage: orbisius_custom_string::br2nl('Your buffer goes here ...');
     * @param str $buff
     * @return str
     * @author Slavi Marinov | http://orbisius.com
     */
    public static function br2nl($buff = '') {
        $buff = preg_replace('#<br[/\s]*>#si', "\n", $buff);
        $buff = trim($buff);

        return $buff;
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 14 '11 at 19:39

0

EDIT: previous answer was backwards of what you wanted. Use str_replace. replace   with \n

echo str_replace('<br>', "\n", $var1);

answered May 14 '11 at 19:39

Crashspeeder

4,291
2
16
21

2

It does the opposite, turns all new line characters into br tags. – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:40

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 14 '11 at 21:00

0

<?php

$var1 = "Line 1 info blah blah <br /> Line 2 info blah blah";
$var1 = str_replace("<br />", "\n", $var1);

?>

<textarea><?php echo $var1; ?></textarea>

edited May 14 '11 at 21:00

Jared Farrish

48,585
17
95
104

answered May 14 '11 at 19:39

Dan LaManna

3,431
4
23
35

str_replace("
", "\n", $var1) - fails it still produced
outputs – someguy May 14 '11 at 19:42
Are you setting $var1 equal to the? So: $var1 = str_replace("
", "\n", $var1); – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:43
No, I don't. It creates a new line man, it's just that your textarea isn't being rendered in codepad. – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:46
No, my example in CodePad does work. Look at your example again. – Jared Farrish May 14 '11 at 19:46
Codepad does not render a textarea, do you see a textarea in the output or just the tags ? http://screencast.com/t/BklEkcjNx – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:48
", "\n", $_SESSION["hobbieTalk"]); echo $convert; ?> - this still fails – someguy May 14 '11 at 19:49
Obviously, you are not looking closely at your example, since your linked image example demonstrates you have fixed the error. :) – Jared Farrish May 14 '11 at 19:49
@Jared - The image example shows the exact code copied from your codepad link. – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:50
@Dan - Yes, but it's NOT the same from your example. My code works, yours above in the answer does not. – Jared Farrish May 14 '11 at 19:51
line1 info
line 2 info from my above example this is what is displayed in my textarea still – someguy May 14 '11 at 19:53
@Jared - Fixed for your awesomeness. It was a guide in the right direction, not copy/paste win. – Dan LaManna May 14 '11 at 19:53
@Dan - Just pay attention to details. What's in the answer is what matters. @someguy - Please edit your answer and put your actual code in it. – Jared Farrish May 14 '11 at 19:56
@Dan - Just an FYI, you were missing double quotes around your `\n`. I appreciate your sarcasm, but here is what your answer said verbatim: http://codepad.org/AA4GZ2jx A cursory glance at the actual answer code should have told you this. :) – Jared Farrish May 14 '11 at 20:02

Converting
into a new line for use in a text area

6 Answers6

Linked

Related

Converting into a new line for use in a text area

6 Answers6

Linked

Related

Converting
into a new line for use in a text area