Question

I’m working on one application ( using PHP, javascript ). Below is the short description about my problem statement

There are two forms avaliable on my application, i.e. SourceFrm and targetFrm.
I am taking input on first form i.e. SourceFrm and doing processing on targetFrm.

Below is the input which I am taking from SourceFrm :

1) Enter your data (Identification of this input box id is ‘inputdata’ ):

2) Enter id ( Identification input box id is id ):

As per above input feed by user I am posting this data to targetFrm for further processiong.

On TargetFrm :

I am simply assigning inputdata value to php varible.
The spaces which are in between of words are getting lost ( more than one spaces converting to one space).

e.g.
User has added below data on input box and submitted

inputdata:

This is my     test.

Here observed that user has added 5 spaces in between ‘my’ and ‘test’ word.
After assigning this input data to php variable. After that I printed this value
Below content I am getting

Output:

This is my test.

More than one spaces is converting to one space. This behaviour I checked on all browsers like FF,MSIE7/8 opera, safari, chrome.

If have used '<pre>' before printing php variable i.e.:

print "<pre>";
print $inputdata;

At time spaces are not getting lost (I am getting exact content).

Here my conflict is how do I presrve exact contents without using '<pre>'.
I have used encoding/decoding (htmlentitiesencode() and decode () )functionality, in my further data processing, so it may create some conflict if i replace spaces with  . ( May conflict ll occur if i use   instead space ).

Is anyone has any ideas, suggestions please suggest.

-Thanks

Answer 1

When you output your variables to HTML, they are parsed as HTML. Any additional white space is brought down to one space.

A simple fix would to replace all spaces with the   html entitity to force browsers to display each space.

I wouldn’t store the string with all the &nbps; in the database, but when you show it the   would ensure that each space is seen.

EDIT

I mean only replace spaces on render…like:

print str_replace(' ', ' ', $inputdata);