Jquery .val() not returning line-breaks in a textarea

I got problem with line breaks in a textarea.

I get the text with .val() function:

var messageBody = $('#composeInput').val();

This is my ajax request

$.ajax({
    url: 'serverScripts/messages/addMessage.php',
    data: 'messageBody='+messageBody+'&invitedJSONText='+invitedJSONText,
    success: function(){
        //Do something
    }
});

And PHP:

$messageBody = nl2br(mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['messageBody']));

The text:

Hi!

How are you?

Becomes:

Hi! How are you?

If I insert the variable messageBody to an another div-element I can't see any \n is this normal. How do I fix this?

When the data parameter is passed as a string, you must URL encode it yourself:

'messageBody=' + encodeURIComponent(messageBody) + '&invitedJSONText=' + encodeURIComponent(invitedJSONText)

But it is far more simpler to pass the data parameter as an object; jQuery encodes the data automatically:

$.ajax({
    url: 'serverScripts/messages/addMessage.php',
    data: {
        messageBody: messageBody,
        invitedJSONText: invitedJSONText
    },
    success: function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
        $("#foo").html(data); // <-- did something
    }
});

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PS: instead of nl2br you can set CSS white-space property to pre-line on an element to display newline as newline.