Question

It’s good day today! But… 🙂
I have the following problem: I have a controller that updates a type_text field in a Mysql DB. The user types text in texarea, clicks “Update” and, oh magic, the text is posted to the database. But without a break…

In the controller i have:

[Authorize]
[HttpPost]
public string EditComment(FormCollection formValues)
{
    var Commenter = User.Identity.Name;
    Int64 id = Convert.ToInt64(Request.Form["id"]);

    string formValue = Request.Form["value"];
    formValue = formValue.Replace("\r\n", "<br/>").Replace("\r", "<br/>");

    comments updateCommnets = db.comments.SingleOrDefault(d => d.id == id && d.commenterName == Commenter);
    updateCommnets.comment = formValue;
    db.SaveChanges();

    return formValue;
}

It’s making me crazy for 2 days…

Can Somebody help me? Thanks a lot!

UPDATED

• I use jeditable to perform inline editing. Example of post string: value=Some+text%0ASome2+text2

Answer 1

I would store the text as is in the database without converting \r\n to <br/>:

[Authorize]
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult EditComment(string value, long id)
{
    var commenter = User.Identity.Name;
    var updateCommnets = db.comments.SingleOrDefault(d => d.id == id && d.commenterName == commenter);
    updateCommnets.comment = value;
    db.SaveChanges();
    return Content(value, "text/plain");
}

Then I would write a custom HTML helper to format the values in the view if necessary to show those comments.

public static MvcHtmlString FormatComment(this HtmlHelper html, string comment)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(comment))
    {
        return MvcHtmlString.Empty;
    }
    var lines = comment
        .Split(
            new string[] { Environment.NewLine }, 
            StringSplitOptions.None
        )
        .Select(x => HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(x))
        .ToArray();
    return MvcHtmlString.Create(string.Join("<br/>", lines));
}

and then in the view:

@Html.FormatComment(Model.Comment)