How to replace \n with <br /> in JavaScript?

Question

I have a textarea where I insert \n when user presses enter. Code from this textarea is sent to a WCF service via jQuery.ajax(). I cannot save \n in DB as it won't show in other applications consuming the service.

How can i replace \n with <br /> tag?

solution

Well many of you tried and some got right with Javascript Regex with /g (global modifier). At the end i had \n inserted twice, i don't know why, my only guess is that jQuery on keypress event created double \n which i debug.

$('#input').keypress(function (event) {
    if (event.which == '13') {
        inputText = $('#input').val() + '\n';
        $('#input').val(inputText);
    }
});

Answer 1

Replace with global scope

$('#input').val().replace(/\n/g, "<br />") 

or

$('#input').val().replace("\n", "<br />", "g") 

Answer 2

it could be done like this:

$('textarea').val().replace(/\n/g, "<br />");

edit: sorry ... the regular expressions in javascript should not be quoted

working example

Answer 3

Like said in comments and other answer, it's better to do it on server side.

However if you want to know how to do it on clientside this is one easy fix:

textareaContent.replace(/\\n/g, "<br />");

Where textareaContent is the variable with the data in the textarea.

Edit: Changed so that it replaces globally and not only first match.