Setting value of a HTML form textarea?

Question

Hey guys,

I'm using the following to set the value of a text area..

<?php
$message = $_REQUEST['message'];
?>
<br/><b>Description</b><br/>
<TEXTAREA NAME="message" COLS=40 ROWS=6 value="<?=$message;?>"></TEXTAREA><br/><br/>
<input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="1000000" />

but it doesn’t appear to be working. The value of message is not null. Does anyone have any idea why it's not filling the value?

Answer 1

Textarea has no value. You need to insert your message between the opening and closing tags.

<textarea><?php echo htmlpecialchars($message); ?></textarea>

Answer 2

<textarea name="message" cols="40" rows="6"><?=$message?></textarea>

Answer 3

Use jQuery and do something like

$j("textarea#id_of_your_textarea).val("Your own text");