display line breaks asp.net mvc razor

Question

I'm using the following to make the text output the line breaks entered in a <textarea> HTML element.

MvcHtmlString.Create(Model.Post.Description.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "<br />"))

Is there a nicer way to do this?

Amendatory

I don't really see how this helper outputs any line breaks as you are replacing line breaks with a space. – Mosera

@Darin - poor copy/pasting on my part, updated. – Amendatory

dup #5032597 – Pignus

Does this answer your question? Replace line break characters with <br /> in ASP.NET MVC Razor view – Radie

Answer 1

There's an even better/awesome solution that employs CSS white-space property:

Using this you avoid Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities...

<p style="white-space: pre-line">@Model.Message</p>

Works like a charm with ASP.NET MVC Razor engine.

Hiltan

This should be in fact the accepted answer. Because the op ask for a nicer way ! – Grange

Answer 2

Your code is vulnerable to XSS attacks as it doesn't HTML encode the text. I would recommend you the following:

var result = string.Join(
    "<br/>",
    Model.Post.Description
        .Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None)
        .Select(x => HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(x))
);
return MvcHtmlString.Create(result);

and then in your view you can safely:

@Html.SomeHelper()

Mosera

Answer 3

Maybe you can output the text inside a <pre> tag.

Nisus

simple but working, thanks a lot – Vacuous

Answer 4

Just use a tag. <pre>@Model.Post.Description</pre>

Or

@Html.Raw(HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(Model.Post.Description.Replace("\r\n", "<br>")))

Neumeyer

Answer 5

It's working for me.

<p class="message">
@Html.Raw("<p>" + Model.Text + "</p>")
</p>

string Model.Text having < br/> tag inside.

Mariel

That is open to XSS attack. Place <script>alert('XSS')'</script> into you Model.Text and you have a vuln. – Hodges

@Hodges then come with a better solution – Law

Answer 6

Here is my solution.

@MvcHtmlString.Create(Regex.Replace(Html.Encode(Model.Address), Environment.NewLine, "<br />", RegexOptions.Multiline))

and of course, you will have to add following using statement for Regex to work.

@using System.Text.RegularExpressions

Hope it is useful for someone.

Miscalculate

Answer 7

Just do the following command as it has filtering enabled:

<p style="white-space: pre-line" <p>

Upali

How is this different form the accepted answer? – Overexcite