HTML forms: display a text in an input (textarea)

Question

I have a form that I pre-fill with my database data. It is working perfectly for all my input. I have a text (that I enter in my database using a textarea). But when I am using the following the text does show in the text area (if I change it to input it is working but I do not have several lines and column allowed with textarea)

<textarea 
    rows="4"
    class="form-control" 
    name="roster_description" 
    id="roster_description" 
    placeholder =
        <?php if ($description_roster){
                echo '"'.$description_roster.'"'; 
            } else {
                echo "";
            }?>>
</textarea>

any ideas?

this is a shot in the dark, remove that newline, and put it in one line instead: `?>>` maybe related http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10585759/why-isnt-my-textareas-placeholder-showing-up — Kevin, Nov 25 '14 at 13:53
This code should work. Can you post the code before the `textarea` definition? — S.Pols, Nov 25 '14 at 13:57
@uʍopǝpısdn $description_roster is a string 'a team composed of players' — Raphael_b, Nov 25 '14 at 14:03
Not a solution, but you might want to [escape the description](http://php.net/htmlspecialchars) first, in case you have a description like `Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson`. — cloudfeet, Nov 25 '14 at 14:04

sebbzzz · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-25T14:01:38.567

1

Just tested it and it works:

<textarea 
    rows="4"
    class="form-control" 
    name="roster_description" 
    id="roster_description" 
    placeholder = "<?php if ($description_roster) echo $description_roster;?>">
</textarea>

edited Nov 25 '14 at 14:01

answered Nov 25 '14 at 13:52

sebbzzz

471
4
14

This isn't the problem. Also the question had a check if `description_roster` exists which is a good thing. So your solution is worser then the question self. – S.Pols Nov 25 '14 at 13:55

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '14 at 16:55

1

The issue was that your statement:

echo "";

doesn't produce quotation marks - it produces the empty string. What you want is to replace this with:

echo '""';

which will produce placeholder=""> instead of placeholder=>.

answered Nov 25 '14 at 16:55

cloudfeet

12,156
1
56
57

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 13 '18 at 14:58

Ok no clue why but the following is working:

<textarea class="form-control" id="description_roster" 
          name="description_roster" rows="4"
          placeholder=<?php
                         if ($description_roster){
                             echo '"'.$description_roster.'"';
                         } else {
                             echo "";
                         }
                       ?>
></textarea>

Thanks to those who had a look

HTML forms: display a text in an input (textarea)

3 Answers3