line breaks from textarea json_encode

[ggalan]

i have a textarea input field and when you hit the return key json_encode will output the actual break, not interpret it as \n or <br> like this. this line breaks my code


{"data":[
{"index":3,"text":"blue
","img":"blue.jpg"},
{"index":2,"text":"green","img":"green.jpg"},
{"index":1,"text":"something","img":"yellow.jpg"}
]}

i would like it to output like this


{"data":[
{"index":3,"text":"blue\n","img":"blue.jpg"},
{"index":2,"text":"green","img":"green.jpg"},
{"index":1,"text":"something","img":"yellow.jpg"}
]}

heres a truncated section of my code


<form id="itmSubmit" method="POST">
<textarea id="entryItm" name="entryItm" cols="50" rows="1" wrap="off"></textarea><br/>
<input class="itmSubmit" type="submit" value="enter" />
</form>


$nTitle = $_POST['entryItm']; // get posted comment
$dataArr = array('index' => $num++, 'text' => $nTitle, 'img' => 'blank.jpg');
array_unshift($dataList['data'], $dataArr);
$dataTxt = json_encode($dataList);

is there a way to output the enter key hit as \n in the json output?

[jscheuer1]

You could assign the value of the field using preg_replace() to an interim variable, and then use that variable in place of its value or it's value's place in the array.

[ggalan]

tried this


$nTitle = preg_replace("\n", "<br/>", $nTitle);

but now i get a message


Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Empty regular expression

[ggalan]

got it


$nTitle = trim( preg_replace( '/\s+/', '<br/>', $nTitle ) );

[jscheuer1]

Using \s is any whitespace between words including tabs and spaces. The + after it would eliminate all but two or more of those in a row, but not all of those occurrences are line breaks, and not all line breaks qualify for that, and you said you wanted \n not <br/> though that might be preferable in this case if workable.

Instead of \s, you might want \n, but the trouble with that is that the kind of line break depends upon the OS of the browser and upon the browser. It can be \n or \r or \r\n

Perhaps:


$nTitle = trim( preg_replace( '/(\r\n)|\n|\r/', '<br/>', $nTitle ) );

or for replacement with \n:


$nTitle = trim( preg_replace( '/(\r\n)|\n|\r/', '\\n', $nTitle ) );

[ggalan]

regex always gets confusing : (