After a recent post at the forums on Dev Shed, I noticed that it isn't mentioned, so I will mention it.
nl2br returns pure HTML, so it should be after PHP anti-HTML functions ( such as strip_tags and htmlspecialchars ).
nl2br
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
nl2br — Inserts HTML line breaks before all newlines in a string
Description
string nl2br
( string
$string
[, bool $is_xhtml = true
] )
Returns string with '<br />' or
'<br>' inserted before all newlines (\r\n,
\n\r, \n and \r).
Parameters
-
string -
The input string.
-
is_xhtml -
Whether to use XHTML compatible line breaks or not.
Return Values
Returns the altered string.
Examples
Example #1 Using nl2br()
<?php
echo nl2br("foo isn't\n bar");
?>
The above example will output:
foo isn't<br /> bar
Example #2 Generating valid HTML markup using the is_xhtml parameter
<?php
echo nl2br("Welcome\r\nThis is my HTML document", false);
?>
The above example will output:
Welcome<br> This is my HTML document
Example #3 Various newline separators
<?php
$string = "This\r\nis\n\ra\nstring\r";
echo nl2br($string);
?>
The above example will output:
This<br /> is<br /> a<br /> string<br />
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.3.0 |
Added the optional is_xhtml parameter.
|
| 4.0.5 |
nl2br() is now XHTML compliant. All older versions
will return string with '<br>' inserted
before newlines instead of '<br />'.
|
See Also
- htmlspecialchars() - Convert special characters to HTML entities
- htmlentities() - Convert all applicable characters to HTML entities
- wordwrap() - Wraps a string to a given number of characters
- str_replace() - Replace all occurrences of the search string with the replacement string
blacknine313 at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
j dot mons54 at gmail dot com ¶
1 year ago
for bbcode :
<?php
$message = nl2br(preg_replace('#(\\]{1})(\\s?)\\n#Usi', ']', stripslashes($message)));
?>
ngkongs at gmail dot com ¶
6 years ago
to replace all linebreaks to <br />
the best solution (IMO) is:
<?php
function nl2br2($string) {
$string = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), "<br />", $string);
return $string;
}
?>
because each OS have different ASCII chars for linebreak:
windows = \r\n
unix = \n
mac = \r
works perfect for me
CGameProgrammer at gmail dot com ¶
8 years ago
It's important to remember that this function does NOT replace newlines with <br> tags. Rather, it inserts a <br> tag before each newline, but it still preserves the newlines themselves! This caused problems for me regarding a function I was writing -- I forgot the newlines were still being preserved.
If you don't want newlines, do:
<?php
$Result = str_replace( "\n", '<br />', $Text );
?>
Anders Norrbring ¶
7 years ago
Seeing all these suggestions on a br2nl function, I can also see that neither would work with a sloppy written html line break.. Users can't be trusted to write good code, we know that, and mixing case isn't too uncommon.
I think this little snippet would do most tricks, both XHTML style and HTML, even mixed case like <Br> <bR /> and even <br > or <br />.
<?php
function br2nl($text)
{
return preg_replace('/<br\\s*?\/??>/i', '', $text);
}
?>
N/A ¶
4 years ago
Here's a more simple one:
<?php
/**
* Convert BR tags to nl
*
* @param string The string to convert
* @return string The converted string
*/
function br2nl($string)
{
return preg_replace('/\<br(\s*)?\/?\>/i', "\n", $string);
}
?>
Enjoy
mail at fort-hub dot com ¶
2 years ago
I noticed that I am using an earlier version of PHP which does not recognise the $xhtml parameter in nl2br(), therefore I am stuck with xhtml line breaks, which I do not want. Thus I made the following simple function:
<?php
function NlToBr($inString)
{
return preg_replace("%\n%", "<br>", $inString);
}
?>
Joshua Anderson ¶
3 years ago
This function will change new lines (line breaks) to <br/> and it allows you to limit the amount of brs allowed at any point in time.
This function was made to avoid people spaming a textarea with hundreds of line breaks or empty lines.
<?php
function nl2br_limit($string, $num){
$dirty = preg_replace('/\r/', '', $string);
$clean = preg_replace('/\n{4,}/', str_repeat('<br/>', $num), preg_replace('/\r/', '', $dirty));
return nl2br($clean);
}
echo nl2br_limit($string,'4');
?>
// Heres how it works //
nl2br_limit($string, $num)
// $string is the entered text you want to strip lines out of, it could be ($_POST['myinput'])
// $num is the amount of consecutive <br/>'s that are allowed any at a time.
The user is allowed to enter as many line breaks as $num allows
hyponiq at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
On the contrary, <b>mark at dreamjunky.comno-spam</b>, this function is rightfully named. Allow me to explain. Although it does re-add the line break, it does so in an attempt to stay standards-compliant with the W3C recommendations for code format.
According to said recommendations, a new line character must follow a line break tag. In this situation, the new line is not removed, but a break tag is added for proper browser display where a paragraph isn't necessary or wanted.
