How to retain carriage returns or line breaks in an ASP.NET web page
The solution is fairly obvious once the newcomer realises that a web page is only the browser's interpretation of html markup, and that a new line in html is represented by the <br /> tag. So what is needed is a way to swap carriage returns or line feeds with the <br /> tag. Well, a way to Replace() them, actually.
<%# Eval("MyMultiLineValue").ToString().Replace(<linebreak>,"<br />") %>
The string.Replace() method allows this, but we also need to identify what we want to replace with the html tag. How is a new line <linebreak> represented in C# or VB.Net?
In C#, it's "\r\n", while in VB.Net, it's vbcrlf. However, there is also a language independent option that does just the same thing: Environment.NewLine.
<%# Eval("MyMultiLineValue").ToString().Replace(Environment.NewLine,"<br />") %>
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Date Posted:
06 April 2007 19:55
Last Updated:
30 May 2007 10:13
Posted by:
Mikesdotnetting
Total Views to date:
42806
Comments
08 January 2009 00:36 from Jack
Thanks for this article! it helped me a lot. I think i'll start coming here a lot earlier during my problem solving from now on.
30 March 2009 01:06 from David
Thank you very much.
18 April 2009 15:57 from Rajashree
It's fantastic.
Thanks you.
19 June 2009 18:00 from andy
THANKS!
10 July 2009 23:42 from Suranga
Thank you. It works :)
24 July 2009 11:13 from Michael
Thanks a million!
I've been using plugin's like tinymce or a customize TextArea just to replace the line breaks in a TextArea.
I didn't know or ask enough about Environment.NewLine...great!
03 September 2009 15:01 from foo
I keep getting the following error:
Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0414'
Cannot use parentheses when calling a Sub
/admin.asp, line 39
Eval(content).ToString().Replace(Environment.NewLine,"
")
04 September 2009 06:30 from Mikesdotnetting
@foo
You get that error because you are not using ASP.NET. You are using classic ASP. They are totally different.
01 October 2009 14:16 from newbieweb
hey mike, actually i'm new to web and id like to know where can i exactly put your suggested code? i'm using detailsview and i wanted the data from sql to appear with linebreaks.. is it in a code behind or within the asp control? im using 3.5 by the way.. thanks in advance!
02 October 2009 11:19 from Mikesdotnetting
@newbieweb
You would put it in the aspx page as part of the control markup eg:
<asp:Label runat="server" ID="MyLabel" Text='<%# Eval("MyMultiLineValue").ToString().Replace(<linebreak>,"<br />") %>' />
21 November 2009 12:57 from Manishdhaduk
Thank you very very very much
27 January 2010 22:00 from parabellum
Ingenious solution. Thank you for sharing.
05 February 2010 19:17 from reader
Perfect. Thanks.
19 March 2010 11:02 from Clever Moon
Ya da man
21 March 2012 14:49 from sam
thanks - works a treat
10 December 2012 05:45 from Patrick
Great example. In my case, I am using Regular Expression and the Environment.NewLine worked well in that too (i.e. Regex.Replace(string, Environment.NewLine, "
);
15 January 2013 10:39 from ben
hello, i'm using webpages and trying to retrieve the data from the database like this:
@row.Description.ToString().Replace(Environment.NewLine,"<br />")
but it is physically replacing a new line with the letters <br />
is there a quick solution to fix this? thanks
17 January 2013 07:57 from Mikesdotnetting
@ben
You need to use Html.Raw:
@Html.Raw(row.Description.ToString().Replace("\n", "<br />"))
28 February 2013 09:54 from pietro
Hi,
this is not the right way to do it. Html has the right tag to accomplish the same result without using replace of linebreak with BR. Simply use html <pre> tag
28 February 2013 13:44 from Mikesdotnetting
@pietro
The <pre> tag is not the correct tag for simple line breaks. It is for preserving all whitespace including tabs, spaces and line breaks. I also defaults to a monospace font. The correct HTML tag for a simple line break is <br />
Check the specs: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#line-breaks