PHP/Mysql - Add form data HTML elements with line breaks

Question

Basically, I have an administration area where users are to be able to add information to a MySQL database using a form textarea. The users have little or no HTML knowledge so I'd like them to be able to use their return key to create line breaks instead of <br /> tags, however I also want the use of HTML to be permitted too for future purposes. I also won't want <br /> tags to appear in the textarea after insertion and would like line breaks instead so as not to confuse people - basically display it in the textarea exactly as it was entered.

I've been having difficulty parsing the data though, I've come up with a solution to prevent the line breaks from being stripped but I just really want to know if this is valid - it works, but if I've learned anything recently I know that doesn't mean it's right!

$extra_details_escape = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['extra_details']);
$extra_details_escape = str_replace('\r\n','LiNeBrEaK',$extra_details_escape);
$extra_details_escape = stripslashes($extra_details_escape);
$extra_details_escape = str_replace('LiNeBrEaK','\r\n',$extra_details_escape);
mysql_query("UPDATE table SET column = '$extra_details_escape' WHERE id = '$id'");

Many thanks,

Joe

Answer 1

Have you tried nl2br() ?

Try this, post string sanitization:

$extra_details_escape = nl2br($_POST['extra_details']);