Chat and textarea formatting

Wed Feb 15 04:52:04 EST 2023

Rick Harrison wrote:

 > I have to create a little chat program with LiveCode on a LiveCode
 > server. Currently I have a textarea text box to accept the user’s
 > input, but it won’t keep any formatting at all, not even carriage
 > returns, line feeds, or bold faced text.  I also have to put that
 > information into a database, so I can pull it out later.
 >
 > How are you handling such things with LiveCode?  One would think
 > that by this time we would have something simple that would deal
 > with this! It has to be a common problem, and one would think
 > their would be a common solution to it.
 >
 > Suggestions?

As Alex noted, not a LC thing, just a limitation of HTML's textArea.

You may find it easier to set the contenteditable property of a 
container element like div or p, and then you can retrieve the inner 
HTML of that element with:

   var tFldMainHTML = document.getElementById("fldMain").innerHTML

Save the example below to a text file and run in your browser. There's 
extra stuff there just for appearance, but the meat of it is that one line.

Once the page is loaded, copy some styled text and paste it into the 
field. When the button's clicked you'll see the full HTML tags in an 
alert dialog.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems

--------------------------------------------------

<!DOCTYPE html>
<htmtl>
<head>
<script>
function GetContents() {
	var tFldMainHTML = document.getElementById("fldMain").innerHTML
	alert( tFldMainHTML );
}
</script>
<style>
#fldMain {
	border: 1px solid blue;
	padding: 4px;
	width: 400px;
	height: 200px;
	overflow: scroll;
}
[contenteditable] {
	outline: 1px solid blue;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
  <p id="fldMain" contenteditable="true"></p>
  <button type="button" onClick="GetContents();">Show InnerHtml</button>
</body>
</html>