nl2br in JSF2 without violating MVC paradigm?

Question

i'm trying to figure out how to most elegantly integrate something like PHP's nl2br() function into a current project done with JSF2/Spring. I could easily create getters using something like return text.replaceAll("\n","<br/>"); in my model classes, however that does seem like putting view related code where it does not belong. I have the same feeling about storing actual html content in my database. I guess the cleanest solution would be using tags/EL for this, however i couldn't find something that seemed to do just that. How would you guys implement something like this? Thank you in advance, any hints are highly appreciated!

Answer 1

Use either CSS, assuming that the text doesn't contain any HTML

<div style="white-space: pre">#{bean.text}</div>

Or create a custom EL function and then display it unescaped (Facelets implicitly escapes HTML)

<div><h:outputText value="#{my:nl2br(bean.text)}" escape="false" /></div>

You should only make absolutely sure that it's free of XSS.

Answer 2

Well, in the first place JSF is a Web UI framework. So, anything that you expect to output to the user will end as HTML (with the only exception of javascript, though). So, I don't find it a grave violation of MVC (if any at all). Maybe you could even push the envelope and directly use <br/> inside the text, instead of replacing \n

In a more general sense, if you have different lines/paragraphs in your text, the more flexible/standard solution would be break your text in the different elements and let your presentation logic handle it. So, instead of a properties with

 presentationPage.introductionText=Ipse Lorum ...sum.\nVini vidi vinci.

You would end with

 presentationPage.introductionText.par1=Ipse Lorum ...sum.
 presentationPage.introductionText.par2=vini vidi vinci.