Displaying Paragraphs of text from MySQL Database

[Guest]

Hi All,

I have a small database used to store news articles and display them on a site.  However what is happening is that the news articles are not being displayed with the paragraph information that the is input.

When the page is displayed it just diplays the text in one block even though I can see the carriage returns if I view the database in phpMyAdmin.

Can anyone assist please?

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

You have two options:

• Save your articles with HTML embedded (use something like FCKEditor or TinyMCE to add HTML features to your text area on the input form)
• Put two new lines between each paragraph when entering text, and use the PHP function nl2br() when displaying the output

Dreamweaver CS4 (and possibly CS3) will insert nl2br() around dynamic text if you double-click the dynamic text object in the Server Behaviors panel and select Convert - New Lines to BRs from the format menu. This wraps the dynamic text object like this:

<?php echo nl2br($row_recordsetName['fieldname']); ?>

nl2br() converts newline characters to <br />.

[Guest]

Hi David,

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my question. I did look at using a HTML editor but those I found were lets just say light weight compared to the one you have suggested, so thanks for that. I know that will enhance the site as I wanted.

However I am not sure about intergrating the ckeditor into my existing code. I will give it a go however and just may have to shout for help again.

Thanks for you help.

Best,

Lloyd

[Guest]

There an additional solution not mentioned so far. I've used an extension that, when applied, maintains original formatting. It worked pretty well.

In the RobGT Suite, (it's an old extension and doesn't work with CS4 wish it worked in CS4) but here's the code that it produces:

Example ASP vbscript so you'd need to translate to php.

<%=Replace(rsRecordsetname.Fields.Item("ColumnNameInRecordset").Value,chr(13),"<br>")%>

[David_Powers]

That ASP script simply converts newline characters to <br> tags. PHP uses a built-in function, nl2br(), whereas the ASP one relies on using the character code to search for a newline (13).

Dreawmeaver handles it natively in PHP without the need for an extension, mainly because I lobbied for it to be added to the Format menu in the Dynamic Text dialog box. I don't know if similar functionality was added to the Format menu for ASP.

Why nl2br()? New line (nl) to (2) break (br).

[Guest]

It's probably not updated as ASP Classic is a "Dead Language," relatively speaking.

[Guest]

Hi LArtJunky,

Thanks for your reply but I am going for the HTML option as it will allow my client more freedom to make the page look better.  Give him a chance to hyperlink names etc and highlight different areas. So thanks anyway.

Lloyd