How to add a line feed in html without using <br> or other tags

Question

When processing a html form, I need to append some text to a text field before saving it to database. To make it prettier, I need to add a line feed in between:

userText = userText + "<br>" + appendedText;
# save userText in database

The problem is,when fetching the text to render web page, for protection agains XSS, I need to escape text from database before rendering. Thus, <br> in userText is rendered as <br> instead of a line feed.

So I am wondering if there is any other way to produce a line feed other than <br>?

I have tried "\n" "\r\n", and " ", none of them work.

Also, the appended text is in the same element with original text, so css with 'display:block' is out of the question.

Answer 1

use \n and then after fetching the data from the database and prior to outputting it, replace all the \n with <br />. This way you are still safe for XSS, and you have full control over the output.

Answer 2

If you are using javaScript to get the form values you can easily use "\n" to add a new line to the value you want to save;

var toSave = FormValue + "\n\n" + "extratext";

Demo here