Insert an \n instead of wrapping text in a textarea?

Question

Is it possible to insert a newline (\n) whenever a textarea wraps in JavaScript? So basically, if there is an overflow, a newline separator should be inserted automatically.

And how would you do it? I need to insert explicit \n symbols. Just wrapping the text won't work.

of course you meant \n not /n. I am not sure what you mean, because i think the default behaviour is that your text is wrapped to the new line.. — mkk, Aug 23 '11 at 18:20
Does http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4719777/finding-line-breaks-in-textarea-that-is-word-wrapping-arabic-text help? — Drazisil, Aug 23 '11 at 18:28

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:30

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If you specifiy a wrap="hard" attribute on your textarea then a newline character will be sent in your form data wherever a visual break occurs in the textarea. The resulting tag would be:

<textarea name="mytext" wrap="hard"></textarea>

answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:30

Joe Landsman

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Does it work in both Chrome and Firefox? Just tried it in Firefox. Didn't work. – Kristina Aug 23 '11 at 18:30
Works in FF5 and Chrome 13 for me. – Joe Landsman Aug 23 '11 at 18:35
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+1 @Nick, yes it does: http://jsfiddle.net/Y9PTH/ The test doesn't work. The newlines are not yet added when you get the value. But the submitted data does contain the breaks. If you hold Ctrl+Shift while you click the submit button, you get a new tab where you can see %0A%0D in the url. Those are the breaks. Tested in Chrome and IE9. – GolezTrol Aug 23 '11 at 18:38
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It's not in a form. I can't submit it. – Kristina Aug 23 '11 at 18:40
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http://jsfiddle.net/Y9PTH/1/ Works in FF too. (Added a target to the form for the demo. Ctrl+Shift apparently won't work). – GolezTrol Aug 23 '11 at 18:40
FYI, I tested on Ye Olde FF 3.6. – GolezTrol Aug 23 '11 at 18:42
**@GolezTrol** *In my case*, it is not in a form. – Kristina Aug 23 '11 at 18:44
I think I see what you're going for now. I just submitted a new answer that splices newlines into the textarea using jQuery. – Joe Landsman Aug 23 '11 at 19:14

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '11 at 19:13

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If you are not submitting to a server then you need to splice the newlines in manually. Check out this Fiddle using jQuery. You could probably reduce the example down to straight JS easily enough if you don't want to use jQuery.

answered Aug 23 '11 at 19:13

Joe Landsman

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 16 '14 at 10:27

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I did it! I've created an iframe with a jsp inside and an identical textarea and before to send the textarea to the server by ajax, I made a submit to the jsp page, so then my data are correctly formatted. It works fine.

answered Sep 16 '14 at 10:27

FRA77DDDDDD

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You should be more specific about answering the question – abbath Sep 16 '14 at 10:37

Insert an \n instead of wrapping text in a textarea?

3 Answers3