How to read back and print text with newlines from a Python (Django) string with HTML?

Question

If someone types in a phrase, such as:

I see you driving

round town with the girl I love,

and I’m like: haiku.

(no blank lines between each line, but the text is written on three separate lines) into a text box on a web page, and then presses a button which is then stored in a database via Django, and that string is read back and printed on a page, how can I get it to print on an HTML page with the newlines still in the text?

So instead of it being printed back as: I see you driving round town with the girl I love, and I’m like: haiku.

It would print as:

I see you driving

round town with the girl I love,

and I’m like: haiku.

I know that if I use: (textarea)soAndSo.body(/textarea), this preserves the newlines that were in the file when the user typed it up originally. How can I get this same effect, but without having to use textarea boxes?

Oleg · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-05 22:58:05Z

4

While having linebreak symbols \r\n replaced with a <br/> is definitely an option, you may want to consider css white-space property:

#haiku {white-space:pre;}

Fiddled, worth noting that the property is surprisingly well-supported, even on IE6+

answered Nov 5, 2012 at 22:58

Oleg

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vicvicvic · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-05 22:25:20Z

2

Wrapping the output in <pre> will preserve formatting, <pre>soAndSo.body</pre>

A more advanced solution involves turning the newlines into HTML paragraphs or line breaks. Django has built-in filters for this: Both linebreaks and linebreaksbr can do the trick.

If you want to use those, filter the output like so: {{ soAndSo.body|linebreaks }}

answered Nov 5, 2012 at 22:25

vicvicvic

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Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

2

Use the linebreaksbr (or linebreaks) filter in your template.

For example:

{{ value|linebreaksbr }}

If value is Joel\nis a slug, the output will be Joel<br />is a slug.

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Nov 5, 2012 at 22:25

Pavel Anossov

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Yuji 'Tomita' Tomita · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-05 22:26:23Z

0

The newlines are there, it just doesn't do anything in HTML.

Use a filter like {{ content|linebreaksbr }}

answered Nov 5, 2012 at 22:26

Yuji 'Tomita' Tomita

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