How to produce HTML new line by putting metadata in Oracle table.

Question

We have a CRM solution where all metadata stored in Oracle table (don't ask me why).

I am issuing an update statement but when get the data from database I see on front end '\n' as part of the text and not new line (like HTML's <br/>).

I was trying to put
directly in description but it shows as br/ on front end.

What escape characters should I put in my update statement instead?

UPDATE "AN_ITEM_LG" 
   SET LONG_DESCRIPTION = 'Some text'||chr(10)||chr(13)||'- or -'||chr(10)||chr(13)||'Some more text' 
 WHERE CONFIG_CODE='TCW_THIS_IS_IT'

Answer 1

try putting in <br/>. Html does not display normal newlines.

Answer 2

Use:

UPDATE AN_ITEM_LG
   SET LONG_DESCRIPTION = 'Some test' || '<br/>'
 WHERE config_code = 'TCW_THIS_IS_IT'

chr(10) is a Line Feed, chr(13) is a Carriage Return. Unless there's some conversion happening, you need to use the HTML markup you want to appear in the final output.

Answer 3

It is entirely possible that the CRM software layer will take care of / prevent you from actually doing what you want to do. Assuming it does allow HTML to flow straight through from the database to the browser:

UPDATE "AN_ITEM_LG" SET
LONG_DESCRIPTION = 'Some text<br>-or-<br>Some more text'
WHERE CONFIG_CODE = 'TCW_THIS_IS_IT'

Note: if the page is being rendered as XHTML, you will need to put <br /> instead

As mentioned, browsers will ignore "whitespace" in general, more than one space is treated as a space, newlines and tabs are largely ignored from

Answer 4

It sounds like you are circumventing your CRM system...probably not a good idea. Your best bet is to look at data which has line breaks they way you want it and duplicate that. It could do the encoding like <br/> instead of <br/>, but you wouldn't know for sure unless you had an example to work from.