Text formating for HTML, with PHP

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2008-10-11 06:40:37 - Graham Ellis
Do you want "normal" text that's formatted in a fixed width font, with white spaces and tabs and new line characters to have a similar appearance on a browser? The default answer of you generate a page of HTML is "tough luck", as text defaults to a variable width font, lines are squished together with multiple spaced becoming single spaces, and even new lines are treated as just white space.

You want:

/dev/disk0s3    117089712 83067248  33766464    72%    /
devfs                 106      106         0   100%    /dev
fdesc                   1        1         0   100%    /dev
map -hosts              0        0         0   100%    /net
map auto_home           0        0         0   100%    /home
/dev/disk1        3674142  3674142         0   100%    /Vol/MOS

but you get:

/dev/disk0s3 117089712 83067248 33766464 72% / devfs 106 106 0 100% /dev fdesc 1 1 0 100% /dev map -hosts 0 0 0 100% /net map auto_home 0 0 0 100% /home /dev/disk1 3674142 3674142 0 100% /Vol/MOS

How can you achieve the effect you desire? There are or have been a number of options:

a) The <PRE> to </PRE> tag pair - though even within there you need to be careful of & and < characters.

b) white-space: pre; within your CSS - but there are issues with how some versions of Internet Explorer handle that attribute

c) Specify Content-Type: text/plain in your headers, but that will turn the whole document into pure text - rather like letting the tail wag the dog

d) Setting the columns of data you see in the example above into columns of a table to achieve a display which is not identical, but has a similar readability

e) Using a fixed width font such as courier, converting spaces to   special characters, and converting new lines into <br /> tags.

Take your choice - there are times that each option is a good one. If you're coding in PHP, then there's a function in the language - nl2br - that converts new lines to line breaks, and you could also use preg_replace to convert spaces into   - s

Here's a sample PHP program that uses nl2br - and I have also taken the opportunity to illustrate a "here document" which allows me to add a multi line block of text within my PHP. The <<< syntax is oft overlooked ....

<?php

 

$line = "The Pie Shop\n25 High Street\nSalisbury\nWilts\n\n";

print ($line);

print (nl2br($line));

 

$haircut = <<<BALD

I used to have %colour% hair, then I went

grey and then I became hairless. With %colour%

hair, they used to call me "bushy". With grey,

they thought I was a whizz or wizzard, and now

I'm called Coot.

 

BALD;

 

$output = preg_replace("/%colour%/","ginger",$haircut);

 

print (nl2br($output));

When I run this from the command line, I get:

The Pie Shop

25 High Street

Salisbury

Wilts

 

The Pie Shop<br />

25 High Street<br />

Salisbury<br />

Wilts<br />

<br />

I used to have ginger hair, then I went<br />

grey and then I became hairless. With ginger<br />

hair, they used to call me "bushy". With grey,<br />

they thought I was a whizz or wizard, and now<br />

I'm called Coot.<br />

and if I display it part of an HTML stream, it looks like this:

The Pie Shop 25 High Street Salisbury Wilts The Pie Shop
25 High Street
Salisbury
Wilts

I used to have ginger hair, then I went
grey and then I became hairless. With ginger
hair, they used to call me "bushy". With grey,
they thought I was a whizz or wizzard, and now
I'm called Coot.

See also ... offsite link - a further description of the HTML and CSS options, and our PHP Techniques course and resources

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Text formating for HTML, with PHP