I have a form with several textarea elements. User enters data and submits the form. On the next page it shows submitted text as static text - in p tags. Obviously New Line and multiple paces get ignored and everything just shows in one line.
I can do some preprocessing like replacing New line characters with "br/" and spaces with  . but I was wondering if there is a standard solution to that either on server side (C#) or client side (javascript)

I have a form with several textarea elements. User enters data and submits the form. On the next page it shows submitted text as static text - in p tags. Obviously New Line and multiple paces get ignored and everything just shows in one line.
I can do some preprocessing like replacing New line characters with "br/" and spaces with  . but I was wondering if there is a standard solution to that either on server side (C#) or client side (javascript)

• javascript
• asp
• textbox

• 2 You can try to style p tag with style="white-space:pre;" – dev-null-dweller Commented Dec 28, 2010 at 21:41

3 Answers 3

Since the data is preformatted (and this isn't just a matter of presentation), the pre element would be suitable (you will still need to replace <, & and friends with the appropriate entities).

Apply CSS white-space: pre; on the <p> element. This way any whitespace inside the element will be preserved.

Actually, I ended up replacing new line symbol with [br/] and it works very well.