which php function should i use?

[bwh2]

i have users entering news articles into a db. when the articles are printed back out, i need a return to be replaced with a </p><p> to end the last paragraph and being a new one.

so what php function should i used to locate a return and insert </p><p>? basically i want it to function just like a post in this forum in that sense.

[beanSoldier]

$replace2 = array("\r\n", '"');
$replaceWith2 = array("<br />", "&quot;");
$theText = str_replace($replace2, $replaceWith2, $theText);

[teiz77]

can be done easier... just use nl2br($string) http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php It autmatically does the job for you.

[bwh2]

thanks beansoldier and teiz. i'm think i'm going to use beansoldier's suggestion b/c i can use it to prevent the user from entering html (unless someone knows a better way to do that also?)

[teiz77]

thanks beansoldier and teiz. i'm think i'm going to use beansoldier's suggestion b/c i can use it to prevent the user from entering html (unless someone knows a better way to do that also?)

Beansoldiers code is not safe enough, it only filters double quotes. Users can still post html code. You should stick to the standard PHP functions to do this.
The main function for this is htmlentitites (http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php)

some examples:


<?php
$str = "A 'quote' is
<b>bold</b>";

$str = nl2br(htmlentities($str));

echo $str;

?>
You have to do nl2br last... otherwise this htmlcode also gets converted.

*edited to add code coloring

[bwh2]

i know the old code wouldn't be sufficient to get rid of html; i was planning on replacing common html strings with quotation marks. the reason why i thought i'd use this (and not htmlentities) is because i want the html to just disappear. that is, when a user types "<b>some text</b>", i want it to output just "some text", not "&lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt".

[teiz77]

hehe... php can also do that... use the strip_tags()...

[bwh2]

excellent. i'll check it out.

[JustJeff]

Even strip_tags isn't that safe - you can inject a LOT of code into <a>, <img>, and <p> tags.

[teiz77]

Even strip_tags isn't that safe - you can inject a LOT of code into <a>, <img>, and <p> tags.

<a>, <img>, and <p> are tags... this function strips all tags, also these.