unnecessary <p></p> tags help?

[7724]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone could help. I have a column in my database which contains a story. Now I want to take the first paragraph, and make it bold (which works!) and then with the rest of the paragraphs I just want a <p> tag around each line, but my output produces two unnecessary <p></p> tags (as shown below) with each new line.

<p style="font-weight:bold">Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
</p><p>
</p><p>lipsum text goes here
</p><p>
</p><p>And here is some more text that goes here and it will go here in this space here provided.
</p><p>

Here’s my code, can anyone advise how I can rectify this problem?

<?
$aParagraphs = explode("\n", $about); 
echo '<p style="font-weight:bold">' . htmlspecialchars_decode($aParagraphs[0]) . '</p>';
for ($i=1; $i < count($aParagraphs); $i++) {
   echo '<p>' . htmlspecialchars_decode($aParagraphs[$i]) . '</p>';
}  
?>

Thanks

[smadeira]

It works when I run it on my system. What is the contents of $about? If there are multiple \n (for instance it is double spaced) you would get the extra <p></p>. I used this string:

$about= "Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. \n lipsum text goes here \n And here is some more text that goes here and it will go here in this space here provided."; 

[crmalibu]

Either use trim() and then test that there is really something there other than whitespace, or use a regular expression to split on multiple newlines.

$aParagraphs = preg_split('#(\r\n|\r|\n)+#', $about); 

You might also try a web search on nl2p(), a common user defined function which uses <br> for single newlines, and wraps multiple newlines in a new set of <p> tags.

[Limotek]

If agree with crmmalibu. It seems that there are additional carriage returns that are causing the problem. Try the following:

$aParagraphs = explode("\n", $about); 
echo '<p style="font-weight:bold">' . htmlspecialchars_decode($aParagraphs[0]) . '</p>'; 
for ($i=1; $i < count($aParagraphs); $i++) {    
   if (trim($aParagraphs[$i]) != "") {
      echo '<p>' . htmlspecialchars_decode($aParagraphs[$i]) . '</p>';
   }
}