Render a string in HTML and preserve spaces and linebreaks

Just style the content with white-space: pre-wrap;.

div {
    white-space: pre-wrap;
}
<div>
This is some text   with some extra spacing    and a
few newlines along with some trailing spaces        
     and five leading spaces thrown in
for                                              good
measure                                              
</div>

have you tried using <pre> tag.

http://jsfiddle.net/NweRa/