asp.net mvc convert new line to html breaks

Question

I have a textarea in mvc. When data is entered into that and I'm displaying it back to the user, how do I show the line breaks?

I display like this:

<%= Model.Description%>

Answer 1

The following class implements a HtmlHelper that properly encodes the text:

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static MvcHtmlString Nl2Br(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string text)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
            return MvcHtmlString.Create(text);
        else
        {
            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
            string[] lines = text.Split('
');
            for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
            {
                if (i > 0)
                    builder.Append("<br/>
");
                builder.Append(HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(lines[i]));
            }
            return MvcHtmlString.Create(builder.ToString());
        }
    }
}

It's easy to use in your views:

<%= Html.Nl2Br(Model.MultilineText) %>

Or with Razor:

@Html.Nl2Br(Model.MultilineText)