Text in PHP comments won't expand and stays on 1 row

Question

FBG 0 Light Poster

13 Years Ago

I have a problem creating a commentbox in PHP. I've created this commentbox from a simple tutorial and created a database with MySQL and it works fine. The only problem is, the table won't expand when more text than the quantity that can fit on 1 row is send. Instead, the text in the comments just stays on 1 row and breaks through the right column of my website, which looks ridiculous (See the picture in the attachment).

How can I make the comment text in the tabel expand to more rows and keep it within the margins of my page? I'm new at working with PHP, but you can probably see that :P )

Thank you in advance!

<?php
require('connect.php');
$name=$_POST['name'];
$comment=$_POST['comment'];
$submit=$_POST['submit'];

if($submit)
{
	
if($name&&$comment)

{
	$insert=mysql_query("INSERT INTO comment (name,comment) VALUES ('$name', '$comment')");
	header("Location: success.php");


}

else

{
	echo "Please fill out all the fields.";
}

}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
</head>
<body>

<form action="index.php" method="POST">
<table>
<tr><td>Name: </td> <td><input type="text" name="name" /></td> </tr>
<tr><td colspan="2">Comment: </td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><textarea name="comment"></textarea></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><input type="submit" name="submit" value="comment"/></td></tr>
</table>
</form>

<?php
$getquery=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM comment ORDER BY id DESC");
while($rows=mysql_fetch_assoc($getquery))
{
	$id=$rows['id'];
	$name=$rows['name'];
	$comment=$rows['comment'];
	
	$linkdel="<a href=\"delete.php?id=" . $rows['$id'] . "\">Delete user</a>";
	echo '<font color="blue">Naam: </font>' . $name . '<br />' . '<br />' . $comment  . '<br />' . $dellink . '<br />' . '<hr align="center" size="1px" width="100%" color="black" />';
	
}	
?>
</body>
</html>

php

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11 Replies
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8 Months Discussion Span
Latest Post 12 Years Ago Latest Post by jcbphlip

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paulrajj 6 Junior Poster

13 Years Ago

Replace your existing echo statement which is inside the while loop by the below code.

echo '<font color="blue">Naam: </font>' . $name . '<br />' . '<br />' . wordwrap($comment, 20, "<br />\n")  . '<br />' . $dellink . '<br />' . '<hr align="center" size="1px" width="100%" color="black" />';

FBG commented: Helped me align my comment box using wordwrap +1

diafol

13 Years Ago

Long words can't be wrapped. If you want to break them, you need to break them in code, e.g. checking word lengths and inserting <br />. This is ugly though, and for it to work you'd probably need to use a monospace font. Even then spacing may differ on different browsers and different screens.

How about using

overflow-x:scroll;

Edited 13 Years Ago by Ezzaral because: Edited out referece to removed post.

FBG commented: Solved my problem using wordwrap +1

diafol

13 Years Ago

Sorry, that's up to you to figure out. You've got all the CSS, I could only guess as to the rules employed. If you've got floated elements, that could cause a problem - so use a 'clear:both' or similar as soon as possible after this.

You may find that placing each comment inside another div may help - but this is wasteful and would be my last suggestion after everything else was tried.

FBG commented: using x-overflow solved my problem, thank you +1

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paulrajj 6 Junior Poster · Answer 1 · 2011-01-31T20:17:37+00:00

You can use wordwrap function in php to break the strings in to new line.

wordwrap($comment, 20, "<br />\n")

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 2 · 2011-01-31T20:34:26+00:00

I already tried that before, but I can't make it work for some reason. I'm probably doing something wrong.

Could you put the code inside my code or point out where I have to write it, so it's on the right place?

Thanks for the quick reaction!

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 3 · 2011-01-31T20:54:13+00:00

You can use wordwrap function in php to break the strings in to new line.
wordwrap($comment, 20, "<br />\n")

I already tried that before, but I can't make it work for some reason. I'm probably doing something wrong.

Could you put the code inside my code or point out where I have to write it, so it's on the right place?

Thanks for the quick reaction!

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 4 · 2011-01-31T21:32:45+00:00

Replace your existing echo statement which is inside the while loop by the below code.

echo '<font color="blue">Naam: </font>' . $name . '<br />' . '<br />' . wordwrap($comment, 20, "<br />\n")  . '<br />' . $dellink . '<br />' . '<hr align="center" size="1px" width="100%" color="black" />';

I already tried that before myself, but it didn't change anything... Text is still outside the margins. I don't understand. This is very annoying. Any clue about what else could be wrong, or why the word wrap doesn't work?

Again, thank you for your help

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 5 · 2011-02-01T00:54:34+00:00

Long words can't be wrapped. If you want to break them, you need to break them in code, e.g. checking word lengths and inserting <br />. This is ugly though, and for it to work you'd probably need to use a monospace font. Even then spacing may differ on different browsers and different screens.
How about using
overflow-x:scroll;

I see. Word wrap works fine with normal words, thank you! That almost solves my problem, because nobody will type such long words.

Still it would be good to eliminate the problem. I've tried the overflow-x:scroll; and that is just what I need for my comments. The only problem was that it messed up the layout of my page (the commentbox was suddenly beneath the comments and some other errors).
Again, it could be possible that I put it on the wrong place in my code. Could you place the overflow-x:scroll; on the right place in my code for me?

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 6 · 2011-02-01T01:28:27+00:00

Sorry, that's up to you to figure out. You've got all the CSS, I could only guess as to the rules employed. If you've got floated elements, that could cause a problem - so use a 'clear:both' or similar as soon as possible after this.
You may find that placing each comment inside another div may help - but this is wasteful and would be my last suggestion after everything else was tried.

I agree, I think the problem is caused by the main column <div>
I think I will be able to work it out myself. Thank you for your tips, help and quick response, I appreciate it very much. Thread is solved :)

FBG 0 Light Poster · Answer 7 · 2011-02-08T04:53:56+00:00

Sorry, that's up to you to figure out. You've got all the CSS, I could only guess as to the rules employed. If you've got floated elements, that could cause a problem - so use a 'clear:both' or similar as soon as possible after this.
You may find that placing each comment inside another div may help - but this is wasteful and would be my last suggestion after everything else was tried.

After letting it rest for a week I tried the x-overflow again today and it works great. Stupid me placed the code on the wrong place in the script last week :) So now my problem is truly fixed. Again thank you!

jcbphlip 0 Newbie Poster · Answer 8 · 2011-10-08T12:09:23+00:00

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Text in PHP comments won't expand and stays on 1 row

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