This article was updated and rechecked on 29th of November 2023

Category: PHP7

Added: 21st of December 2015

Updated On: 29th of November 2023

Viewed: 7,692 times

Preserve line breaks in PHP. nl2br function

If your website allows users to enter information via a textbox, chances are they going to enter new lines as they enter their text. The problem is when you output this information, the line breaks will not be preserved.

To solve this issue in PHP, we can the use the nl2br function. The nl2br() function inserts HTML line breaks (<br />) in front of each newline (n) in a string.

In the example below, we presume that the user has just entered some text via a textbox on your website.

To preserve the line breaks you would use the following php code below.

<?php
echo nl2br($_POST['textarea']);
?>


If you are outputting information via your database, you would use the following code.
<?php
echo nl2br($row['textarea']);
?>