How do I replace carriage returns with <br /> using freemarker and spring?

I've got an internationalised app that uses spring and freemarker. I'm getting content from localised property files using.

${rc.getMessage("help.headings.frequently_asked_questions")}

For some of the content there are carriage returns in the property values. Because I'm displaying in a web page I'd like to replace these with

.

What is the best way to do this?

Edit: looking closer it seems that I don't actually have carriage returns in the property files. The properties are coming back as single line strings.

Is there a better way to declare the properties so they know they are multi-line?

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Cheers, Pete

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${springMacroRequestContext.getMessage("help.headings.frequently_asked_questions", [], "", false)?html?replace("\n", "<br>")}

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To handle CR + LF (carriage return + line feed) line endings, as well as just LF do this:

<#escape x as x?html?replace("\\r?\\n","<br />",'r')>...</#escape>

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<#escape x as x?html?replace('\n', '<br>')>...</#escape>

works just fine.

If you want this to be the default behaviour, consider writing a custom TemplateLoader as suggested in this blog: http://watchitlater.com/blog/2011/10/default-html-escape-using-freemarker/.

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As to the

Is there a better way to declare the properties so they know they are multi-line?

part of your question, maybe this helps: you can include line terminator characters in your property values by using the \r and \n escape sequences, like it is explained in the API documentation of java.util.Properties#load(java.io.Reader).

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I would recommend writing a custom directive for it (see freemarker.template.TemplateDirectiveModel), so in your templates you can write something like <@my.textAsHtml springMacroRequestContext.getMessage(...) />. It's important that this is a directive, not function, so it works properly inside <#escape x as x?html>...</#escape>. Otherwise it would be double-escaped. Using a directive can also give the highest performance, as you can directly send the output to the output Writer, rather than building a String first.