Display user meta data from a textarea as a formated text

Question

With the below two functions I can add a textarea custom user meta field named 'publications' to the user profile and save/update it:

add_action( 'show_user_profile', 'extra_user_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile', 'extra_user_profile_fields' );

function extra_user_profile_fields( $user ) { ?>
  <textarea rows="10" cols="450" name="publications" id="publications"  class="regular-text" />
  <?php echo esc_attr( get_the_author_meta( 'publications', $user->ID ) ); ?></textarea>
<?php }


add_action( 'personal_options_update', 'save_extra_user_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile_update', 'save_extra_user_profile_fields' );

function save_extra_user_profile_fields( $user_id ) {

if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_user', $user_id ) ) { return false; }
  update_user_meta( $user_id, 'publications', $_POST['publications'] );
}

With the next function I can display the meta data from the field created above on an user page, with a shortcode [USER_META user_id=2 meta="publications"]:

add_shortcode('USER_META', 'user_meta_shortcode_handler');

function user_meta_shortcode_handler($atts,$content=null){
    return esc_html(get_user_meta($atts['user_id'], $atts['meta'], true));
}

The problem is that in the textarea I can format the text with simple paragraphs, but when it is displayed on front-end the paragraphs disappear and I see only a simple text flow. How to solve this?

I have Wordpress 3.5, Twenty Twelve Theme.

Answer 1

Have a look at both functions esc_attr() and esc_html()

Replace this one :

add_shortcode('USER_META', 'user_meta_shortcode_handler');

function user_meta_shortcode_handler($atts,$content=null){
    return esc_html(get_user_meta($atts['user_id'], $atts['meta'], true));
}

with this :

add_shortcode('USER_META', 'user_meta_shortcode_handler');

function user_meta_shortcode_handler($atts,$content=null){
    return esc_attr(get_user_meta($atts['user_id'], $atts['meta'], true));
}

Answer 2

You can use PHP's nl2br function which will convert newlines to <br> tags, or you could try something like this Stack Overflow answer.

Answer 3

Finally I adopted this the second solution:

/* Display the selected user meta data with a shortcode */
add_shortcode('user_meta', 'user_meta_shortcode_handler');
/* usage: [user_meta user_id=1] */
function user_meta_shortcode_handler($atts,$content=null){ ?>
  <?php
    echo '<h3>Publications</h3>';
    echo wpautop(get_user_meta($atts['user_id'], 'publications', true));
  ?>
  <?php
}

For a good result paragraphs should be separated by a blank line.

EDIT: I updated my code to this (second solution):

add_shortcode('user_meta', 'user_meta_shortcode_handler');
/* usage: [user_meta user_id=1] */
function user_meta_shortcode_handler($atts,$content=null){ ?>
  <?php

    $text = "";

    //Explode the textareas rows to paragraphs
    function explode_paragraphs($text) {
      $text = explode("\n", $text); 
      foreach($text as $str) { echo '<p>'.$str.'</p>'; }
    }

    $text = esc_html(get_user_meta($atts['user_id'], 'publications', true));
    if(!empty($text)) { echo '<h3>Publications</h3>'; explode_paragraphs($text); }

  ?>
  <?php
}

Now, for a good result paragraphs should NOT be separated by a blank line.