How to get values from Textarea while preserving newlines with PHP?

Question

I have a very simple form with a textarea.

I can get the textarea's value with PHP by:

<?php $val = $_POST['txt']; ?>

My question is, that, how could I preserve the newline separators when I'm processing the text?

I intend to send a Plain text email, NOT a HTML email, this is why I need PHP to send the email in the exact same format, which the user types in the textarea.

How is it possible?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 17 '14 at 14:10

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Have you tried nl2br? (http://www.php.net/nl2br)

echo nl2br($val);

edited Jul 17 '14 at 14:10

Synchro

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answered Jul 17 '14 at 14:04

MTM

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He doesn't want a HTML email, ONLY plain text, http://uk3.php.net/nl2br converts `\n` etc to `
` – Ian Jul 17 '14 at 14:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '14 at 14:19

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Answer found:

If you are planning to send Plain text email messages, you should only use the raw Textarea data and paste it as the email's body.

answered Jul 17 '14 at 14:19

Radical_Activity

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 17 '14 at 14:23

You don't need to do anything... Because you already have the new lines when you get the data from your textarea... Just make sure to use double quotes " and not single ' for new lines \n.

echo '\n'; // this will output these two characters: \n
echo "\n"; // this will output a new line

How to get values from Textarea while preserving newlines with PHP?

3 Answers3