Unable to get newline character to render on aspx page

Question

I'm doing some server-side validation on a sharepoint aspx page. If there are any errors, I pass a string to the zone.error text in PreRender.

How do I get my newline characters to render?

Right now I have:

    protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
    {
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_errorText))
        {
            this.Zone.ErrorText += "I'm an error!" + Environment.NewLine + "Fix me damnit!";                
        }
        base.OnPreRender(e);
    }

I have tried various combinations of

<br />, \\r\\n, \\n, while using htmlEncode and htmlDecode to no avail.

I have read something about <pre>, in the past, but I'm not sure if this is the correct approach.

What's the trick here?

Answer 1

You will need to render a <br/> tag not an Environment.NewLine, that will simply drop a \\n or \\r\\n in. That won't render on the HTML page.

protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
    {
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_errorText))
        {
            this.Zone.ErrorText += "I'm an error<br/>Fix me damnit!";                
        }
        base.OnPreRender(e);
    }

Answer 2

try to use tag

<br>

instead of Environment.NewLine