CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptphpjqueryhtmlmysql
Fred Langemark
Fred Langemark

Reputation: 140

PHP MySQL Fill Textarea with Text that contains newlines using jQuery

I have a form that users fill out which contains a textarea. This form is uploaded to a MySQL database, and then later the user can edit the info. The issue I am having is that when I use AJAX to suggest data for the textarea, javascript gives a "Invalid or unexpected token" error wherever a newline appears.

In the suggestion box it is a list with rows like so...

<li onClick="selectBenefiting('$benefiting')">$benefiting</li>

And selectBenefiting() is written like this...

function selectBenefiting(val) {
    $("#benefiting").val(val);
    $("#benefiting-sugg").hide();
}

Can anyone help me achieve this while preserving the line breaks? I have been searching for hours, and while I see other people with the same issue, I have yet to find a solution.

As I've said, it is a MySQL database. If I echo the data in the textarea using PHP it displays correctly, so I know it is in the database correctly. The issue is when using jQuery and AJAX to attempt to populate the textarea.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE:

$benefiting_js = str_replace("\r\n", "\\r\\n", $benefiting);

Slightly modified solution from Nick did the trick.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 181

Answers (1)

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 147156

The problem is that Javascript doesn't like newlines in strings. So where you have them, you need to escape the newline characters. Try something like

$benefiting_js = str_replace("\n", "\\n", $benefiting);

And then change your <li> to 

<li onClick="selectBenefiting('$benefiting_js')">$benefiting</li>

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions