Creating new paragraphs in news script

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 06:33

I'm using a form with a textfield in order to pubish news on my home page. The problem is that I can't press ENTER and begin a new paragraph because that paragraph will end up above all news entries and will be unformatted. It will look like this (look at the last entry, it continues above all the other entries).
I'm using the script below to save my entries in a text file. Is there something I can add to that script that would make it possible to press ENTER when writing news without messing up the front page?

This is the script I’m using to write news to a textfile:

PHP Code:


<?

fopen("news.txt", "a+");

if($action == add){

$fp = fopen("news.txt", "a+");



    $data="<span class=\"litenblue\">".date("d.m.Y")."</span> <br>";

    $data.="<span class=\"liten\">".$form_text."</span> </p> \n";



      fputs($fp, $data);



        fclose($fp);

    echo '

   <html>

   <head>

      <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="1; url=yo.phtml">

   </head>

   <body></body>

   </html>

   ';

}

else{?>



<form name="textform" method="post" action="update.phtml" class="texten">

<input type="hidden" name="action" value="add">

<p> <span class="texten">

<SCRIPT>

      if (navigator.appName == 'Netscape') {

        document.write('<textarea name="form_text" cols="25" rows="6" wrap="virtual"></textarea>\n');

      } else {

        document.write('<textarea name="form_text" cols="50" rows="6" class="formen" wrap="virtual"></textarea>\n');

      }

</SCRIPT>

</span></p>

<p> <span class="texten">

<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Skicka!">

</span></p>

</form>



<?

}

?>

I hope you understand what I mean.

**seanf** · Sep 9, 2001 06:43

Not sure if I fully understand your prob, but have you tried using:

PHP Code:


nl2br($text);

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php

Sean

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 06:59

What I'm trying to do is write something like this in a textfield:

Here comes my news text. Blah, blah, blah...
Here is a new paragraph. Blah blah blah...

I want it to display like this on the front page:

Code:

1.12.2001
Here comes my news text. Blah, blah, blah...
Here is a new paragraph. Blah blah blah...

NOT like this:

Code:

Here is a new paragraph. Blah blah blah...

1.12.2001
Here comes my news text. Blah, blah, blah...

But I think that you understood me correctly earlier. nl2br seems to be what I'm looking for. I should probably place it somewhere in this code: $data.="".$form_text." \n"; or am I wrong?

**seanf** · Sep 9, 2001 07:05

The text is held in the variable $form_text, so do this:

PHP Code:


$form_text = nl2br($form_text);

Put it before this part and all should work:

PHP Code:


$data="<span class=\"litenblue\">".date("d.m.Y")."</span> <br>";

$data.="<span class=\"liten\">".$form_text."</span> </p> \n";

Sean

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 07:14

Thank you very much Sean! I'll try that later tonight and let you know how it works.

**seanf** · Sep 9, 2001 07:20

How is the PHP learning going?

Sean

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 09:11

*lol*

Very slowly... I haven't purchased any books yet, but I'm learning from ready made scripts that I'm using right now (I'm designing a personal site for my boyfriend's sister). The PHP gurus (yes, you are one of them) here at SitePoint are also very helpful and I don't know what I would do without you. Thank you for all your help!

For some reason $form_text = nl2br($form_text); didn't work in my script but I tried this instead: $form_text = ereg_replace("(\n)", " ", $form_text); and got the effect I needed.

**seanf** · Sep 9, 2001 09:13

Originally posted by Marina
The PHP gurus (yes, you are one of them) here at SitePoint are also very helpful and I don't know what I would do without you.

I don't think I am!

Sean

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 09:15

Yes you are! I see you helping out in the PHP forum all the time!

**seanf** · Sep 9, 2001 10:50

Originally posted by Marina
For some reason $form_text = nl2br($form_text); didn't work in my script but I tried this instead: $form_text = ereg_replace("(\n)", " ", $form_text); and got the effect I needed.

Use str_replace() instead of ereg_replace() as it is faster

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

Sean

**Marina** · Sep 9, 2001 11:18

Thanks for the tip. I'll do that.

**jough** · Sep 9, 2001 15:11

Just to add to an already solved problem...

str_replace() is faster than ereg_replace() if you only need to replace one string with another - but of course if you needed to use the power of regular expressions (a huge topic on its own) you'd *need* to use ereg_replace() instead.

Don't know why nl2br() didn't work for you. If you use:

$form_text = nl2br($form_text); it returns the same thing that your string replace function does, except a bit faster.

What is the value of $form_text after you use nl2br? Just curious...

-- Jough

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