Replace line break characters with <br /> in ASP.NET MVC Razor view

💻 Tech Blog: How to Replace Line Break Characters with <br /> in ASP.NET MVC Razor View

Hey there tech enthusiasts! 👋 Welcome back to our blog, where we unravel complex problems and provide simple solutions. Today, we will address a common issue in ASP.NET MVC Razor view: replacing line break characters with <br /> tags while preventing them from being encoded. Let's dive right in!

The Problem

One of our readers, let's call them Jack, encountered a situation where they had a textarea control in their application that accepted user input. When rendering this text in a view using @Model.CommentText, everything was working smoothly - except for one little hiccup. Jack wanted to replace the line break characters with <br /> tags, but any attempt to do so ended up encoding the tags instead. 😰

The Solution

Luckily, there's a straightforward solution to this problem. We recommend using the Html.Raw() method in ASP.NET MVC Razor view. This method tells the Razor engine to render the provided string as HTML, without encoding any special characters. Here's an example:

@Html.Raw(Model.CommentText?.Replace("\n", "<br />"))

In the code snippet above, we use the Replace() method to replace the line break character (\n) with the <br /> tag. Then, we pass this modified string to the Html.Raw() method, which ensures that the <br /> tags are rendered without being encoded.

Example

Let's illustrate this with an example. Suppose Jack inputs the following text in the textarea control:

Hello
World

Using @Html.Raw(Model.CommentText?.Replace("\n", "<br />")), the rendered output will correctly have line breaks replaced with <br /> tags:

Hello<br />
World

Isn't that neat? 🎉

Time to Engage!

We hope this quick guide has helped you solve the line break encoding issue in ASP.NET MVC Razor view. If you faced any other challenges or have further questions, don't hesitate to reach out in the comments section below. Our tech-savvy community would love to assist you! 💪

Also, make sure to share this post with your fellow developers who might find it useful. Sharing is caring! 🤗

Happy coding! ✨