Displaying \r and \n properly on ASP.NET core web page

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I have a text field, lets assume user writes a string:

Example text.
Etc.

It's saved to string as:

Example text. \r\n\r\nEtc.

When you try to display it, it will look like this:

Example text.  Etc.

Simply it ignores all the details that ensure the string is displayed properly. How to display it the way it was in input? I want to display it inside

HTML

<p></p>

What I have tried:

Tried to replace \n and \r with

HTML

<br>

it doesn't work. I'm out of ideas. Looks like ASP.NET does not support it but that seems unlikely.

Posted 27-Mar-21 22:53pm

Member 15047625

Updated 29-Mar-21 3:21am

v4

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Richard MacCutchan 28-Mar-21 5:24am

Where is the code that does the replacement?

Member 15047625 28-Mar-21 5:33am

.Replace() inside controller and view, both versions change nothing.

Richard MacCutchan 28-Mar-21 5:39am

Well I am sorry but there is no way I can guess from a single method call what is happening in your code. Please provide proper details.

Member 15047625 28-Mar-21 5:51am

string.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "< br>"). "\n" and "\r\n" also does not change the output.

P.S

There is no space in br but here br gets removed for reasons somewhat known.

Richard MacCutchan 28-Mar-21 5:53am

Yes, because the Replace method returns the new modified string: String.Replace Method (System) | Microsoft Docs[^].

Member 15047625 28-Mar-21 15:35pm

It just replaces Environment.NewLine with raw < br > which displays on the website. It would be wiser to replace it with actual new line, and not let user compile html on their own in their head.

Dave Kreskowiak 29-Mar-21 12:10pm

You're blaming ASP.NET for this when it's not a problem with ASP.NET. It's HTML that doesn't natively support \r\n the way you want.

To fix-up the Windows new line sequence of \r\n to one more friendly to HTML, you simply have to replace the \r characters with nothing, or an empty string.

string newContent = oldContent.Replace("\r", string.Empty);

2 solutions

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Richard Deeming · Answer 1 · 2021-03-29T03:21:00

Set style="white-space:pre-line;" on the containing element:

Razor

<div style="white-space:pre-line;">
    @Model.MyText
</div>

white-space - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets | MDN[^]

Or use a custom helper method, such as the one described in this StackOverflow answer[^]:

James S. wrote[^]:

C#

public static IHtmlContent RenderNewlines<TModel>(this IHtmlHelper<TModel> html, string content)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(content) || html is null)
    {
        return null;
    }

    TagBuilder brTag = new TagBuilder("br");
    IHtmlContent br = brTag.RenderSelfClosingTag();
    HtmlContentBuilder htmlContent = new HtmlContentBuilder();

    // JAS: On the off chance a browser is using LF instead of CRLF we strip out CR before splitting on LF.
    string lfContent = content.Replace("\r", string.Empty, StringComparison.InvariantCulture);
    string[] lines = lfContent.Split('\n', StringSplitOptions.None);
    foreach(string line in lines)
    {
        _ = htmlContent.Append(line);
        _ = htmlContent.AppendHtml(br);
    }

    return htmlContent;
}

#realJSOP · Answer 2 · 2021-03-28T00:02:00

Solution 1

Try it this way:

XML

<%=myText.Replace("\r\n", "<br/>")%>

Posted 28-Mar-21 0:02am

#realJSOP

Comments

Member 15047625 28-Mar-21 6:43am

<%=@item.Body.Replace("\r\n", "br/")%> (br with <>)

Now the output looks like this:

<%=Example text. br/br/Etc.%>