Editing files in a <textarea>

Dev Shed Forums Sponsor:

July 2nd, 2000, 03:49 PM

alexgreg

Full Access

Join Date: Jun 2000

Location: London, UK

Posts: 2,019

Time spent in forums: 3 sec
Reputation Power: 15

OK, I've written this program to let me edit ASCII files on my server in a <textarea>. However, if the file that is being edited contains a textarea within it, then I get problems...

To cut a long story short, what I want to do is read this file into the textarea but I want to convert all of the < and > characters to < and > 's. I figgered you'd do this through Regular Expressions: however these are poorly documented in the PHP book I have, though the Perl book I have tells me how to do this. Could someone tell me how to do this, IN PHP!

Thanks very much.

--------------------------
Alex
(http://www.alex-greg.co.uk)

oh yeah, here's the code:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica">code:</font><HR><pre>

<? include("top.txt"); ?>
<form method=POST action="save_file.php3">

<? print "$file"; ?><br>

<? print '<textarea name="data" rows=18 cols=170 class=text>'; ?>
<?
if (file_exists("$file"))
{readfile("$file");}
?>
<? print "</textarea><br><br>";

print '<input type="hidden" name="file" value="<? print "$file"; ?>">';

print '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Save Changes" class="text">';

print '</form>';

include("bottom.txt"); ?>

[/code]

The program gets send a variable by the calling form called "file".

July 2nd, 2000, 06:00 PM

polman

Contributing User

Join Date: Jul 2000

Posts: 45

Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 13

$file = eregi("<","<",$file);
$file = eregi(">",">",$file);

If you want a good place to look for info, www.php.net has a searchable list of all the functions and explains them fairly well.

July 3rd, 2000, 04:47 PM

alexgreg

Full Access

Join Date: Jun 2000

Location: London, UK

Posts: 2,019

Time spent in forums: 3 sec
Reputation Power: 15

Thanks, but whereabouts does the code go?

July 3rd, 2000, 06:17 PM

polman

Contributing User

Join Date: Jul 2000

Posts: 45

Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 13

Man, the 2nd "<" and the 2nd ">" should be the & lt; and the & gt; ... it just displayed it wrong. Anyway that should go after the readfile.

July 4th, 2000, 02:10 PM

terium

Contributing User

Join Date: Jun 2000

Posts: 60

Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 13

Actually, what you want is htmlspecialchars(). This will change &, ", <, and > to HTML entities.

So, if you have:
$string = "<html></html>";

and do this:
$string = htmlspecialchars($string);
echo $string;

you'll get this:
<html></html>

HTH

July 4th, 2000, 02:19 PM

terium

Contributing User

Join Date: Jun 2000

Posts: 60

Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 13

Actually, what you want is htmlspecialchars(). This will change &, ", <, and > to HTML entities.

So for every print() statement that you have with < or >, do this (not tested):
print htmlspecialchars('<textarea or something>');

HTH

Editing files in a &lt;textarea&gt;

Developer Shed Advertisers and Affiliates

Editing files in a <textarea>