[javascript] Split string in JavaScript and detect line break

I have a small function I found that takes a string from a textarea and then puts it into a canvas element and wraps the text when the line gets too long. But it doesn't detect line breaks. This is what it's doing and what it should do:

Input:

Hello

This is dummy text that could be inside the text area.
It will then get put into the canvas.

Wrong output:

Hello this is dummy text
that could be inside the
text area. It will then
get put into the canvas.

What it should output:

Hello

This is dummy text that
could be inside the text
area. It will then get
put into the canvas.

This is the function I'm using:

function wrapText(context, text, x, y, maxWidth, lineHeight) {
    var words = text.split(' ');
    var line = '';

    for(var n = 0; n < words.length; n++) {
        var testLine = line + words[n] + ' ';
        var metrics = context.measureText(testLine);
        var testWidth = metrics.width;
        if (testWidth > maxWidth && n > 0) {
            context.fillText(line, x, y);
            line = words[n] + ' ';
            y += lineHeight;
        }
        else {
            line = testLine;
        }
    }
    context.fillText(line, x, y);
}

Is it possible to achieve what I'm trying to get? Or is there a way to simply move the text area as is into the canvas?

You can use the split() function to break input on the basis of line break.

yourString.split("\n")

In case you need to split a string from your JSON, the string has the \n special character replaced with \\n.

Split string by newline:

Result.split('\n');

Split string received in JSON, where special character \n was replaced with \\n during JSON.stringify(in javascript) or json.json_encode(in PHP). So, if you have your string in a AJAX response, it was processed for transportation. and if it is not decoded, it will sill have the \n replaced with \\n** and you need to use:

Result.split('\\n');

Note that the debugger tools from your browser might not show this aspect as you was expecting, but you can see that splitting by \\n resulted in 2 entries as I need in my case:

You should try detect the first line.

Then the:

if(n == 0){
  line = words[n]+"\n";
}

I'm not sure, but maybe it helps.

Split string in JavaScript

var array = str.match(/[^\r\n]+/g);

OR

var array = str.split(/\r?\n/);

Here's the final code I [OP] used. Probably not best practice, but it worked.

function wrapText(context, text, x, y, maxWidth, lineHeight) {

    var breaks = text.split('\n');
    var newLines = "";
    for(var i = 0; i < breaks.length; i ++){
      newLines = newLines + breaks[i] + ' breakLine ';
    }

    var words = newLines.split(' ');
    var line = '';
    console.log(words);
    for(var n = 0; n < words.length; n++) {
      if(words[n] != 'breakLine'){
        var testLine = line + words[n] + ' ';
        var metrics = context.measureText(testLine);
        var testWidth = metrics.width;
        if (testWidth > maxWidth && n > 0) {
          context.fillText(line, x, y);
          line = words[n] + ' ';
          y += lineHeight;
        }
        else {
          line = testLine;
        }
      }else{
          context.fillText(line, x, y);
          line = '';
          y += lineHeight;
      }
    }
    context.fillText(line, x, y);
  }

This is what I used to print text to a canvas. The input is not coming from a textarea, but from input and I'm only splitting by space. Definitely not perfect, but works for my case. It returns the lines in an array:

splitTextToLines: function (text) {
        var idealSplit = 7,
            maxSplit = 20,
            lineCounter = 0,
            lineIndex = 0,
            lines = [""],
            ch, i;

        for (i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {
            ch = text[i];
            if ((lineCounter >= idealSplit && ch === " ") || lineCounter >= maxSplit) {
                ch = "";
                lineCounter = -1;
                lineIndex++;
                lines.push("");
            }
            lines[lineIndex] += ch;
            lineCounter++;
        }

        return lines;
    }