I'm having lots of trouble preserving the exact look of how a user types out a short paragraph.
My problem is that random slashes and html show up. When people would hit enter while typing the message, "\r\n\" would show up when it's echoed later. I tried fixing that but now when the user types an apostrophe while composing a message, it gets inserted into the database with 3 back slashes, and thus echoed later with 3 back slashes with the apostrophe. Frustrating! I want to just start over!
Here's what I do.
- User types a message in an input field and hits submit.
- That message gets inserted into the database with type varchar(280) via php.
- That message gets echoed via php.
I've tried many different things like nlbr
and strip_tags
and stripslashes
and mysql_real_escape_string
and others. I might be using these all in a certain combination that messes it up.
So my question is what is the best way to preserve exactly how someone composes a text paragraph to be later echoed via php to look just like how they typed it?