I try to use <br /> inside the module, but once I save the content, it erases the code

<br />

and instead changes the look of the code to include a line break. The output of the code has no effect. So right now to be able to have line breaks, I have to include every segment in a

<p>

, but then the spaces between the lines are too big. Is there a way to get around this? Thanks.

Hi,

Unfortunately the removal of <br /> is needed. Joomla automatically converts new lines (\n) into <br /> tags. So you cannot tell if the <br /> is added by Joomla (which would corrupt PHP code, and xHTML which uses block level elements for layout) or intended.

So all <br /> is removed.

The other option with mod PHP would be to parse the PHP code - either with the tokenizer or regular expressions, and decide which <br /> is intended and which isn't, which would be unnecessary overhead 99% of the time. It still doesn't solve the unintended <br /> tags in xHTML however.

The other option is to style your <p> tags with CSS. Add the styling you need.

eg:

<div class="my_custom_content">

<p>Some text</p>
<p>Some text</p>

</div>

and in CSS

div.my_custom_content p {
  margin:0;
  padding:5px 2px;
}

Notice I'm using the CSS selector: div.my_custom_content p instead of just p So we do not select all the other <p> tags in the document. Just that inside the div

<div class="my_custom_content">

This is an annoying bug - has anyone reported it to the Joomla developers?

The workaround I use for this issue is to use the following code instead of the <br /> tag:

<? echo '<br'.' />'; ?>

Admittedly it is quite verbose, but at least the formatting of the code in the module parameter is not modified every time the module is saved. If anyone has a better idea, then please suggest it! Cheers Hal

Great workaround! Thanks for sharing.