HOw do I replace new lines with <BR> tags?

[Dave Alvarado]

Hi,

I"m using MyFaces 1.1.5 with Tomahawk 1.1.7. Does anyone know how I can replace carriage returns ("\n" characters) with
so that my text is output and properly formatted ? The <PRE> tag is not an option as it doesn't allow styling of the text within it. Currently I am wrapping the text in a span with a particular class and then using Javascript to find all instances of that class and replace the HTML within it. A ridiculous hack, but there is surprisingly no help for this subject online.

Thanks, - Dave

[Tim Holloway]

As a rule, I don't like to generate HTML in the code. Wherever possible, I prefer to keep the display stuff in the display and the logic stuff in the logic components. But there are times when this isn't practical. For example, I have an app which allows people to edit, store, and display formatted text on web pages. It uses a RichFaces HTML editor control, so the raw data is in HTML form (which is still better than hard-coding HTML in java code).

To display that kind of stuff, you can use the <h:outputText escape="false" value="...."/> construct. If your text contains end-of-line characters, you can use a string search-and-replace function to substitute "<br/>" tags and output the results using outputText.

Earlier versions of JSF did not handle intermixing raw HTML and JSF tags very well. It's much better these days, but you'll still end up with tidier, more portable displays if you minimize the HTML and use the JSF equivalents.

[Tom mmeke]

If you're using a backing bean to get your text, just use string replacement to replace "\n" with "<br />".

public String getDescription() {
        return this.entity.getDescription().replace("\n", "<br />");
}

Then use escape = false in your outputText field.

<h:outputText value="#{backingBean.description}" escape="false" />

* This answer might come a bit late for the OP. But google brought me here, so it might help someone else. *

[Gustavo Guevara]

Tom mmeke wrote:If you're using a backing bean to get your text, just use string replacement to replace "\n" with "<br />".

public String getDescription() {
        return this.entity.getDescription().replace("\n", "<br />");
}

Then use escape = false in your outputText field.

<h:outputText value="#{backingBean.description}" escape="false" />

* This answer might come a bit late for the OP. But google brought me here, so it might help someone else. *

It helped me out, thank you. I did however end up with a bit of a doubt. What do you mean by "entity" on this line?

public String getDescription() {
        return this.entity.getDescription().replace("\n", "<br />");
}