Preserving the Character set inside text area

[rite2vinoth]

HI

I want to display the contents of a big XML inside a text area so that the user would be able to edit it. But the XML consists of characters such as & " which are interpreted by as & and " respectively.
But if this going to be the case the backend systems could not read them. I used <xmp>, but it is already deprecated and further it would not work inside text area. Could somebody help me with this.

in short : &amp; should be displayed as &amp; itself and not & inside the textarea.

Vinoth

[KevinADC]

javascript I am sure can do the proper character escaping, but I don't know how to do it myself. You can also do it server side with PHP or perl or other scripting language. Bascially the & symbol needs to converted to &amp; so &amp; would become &amp;amp; etc etc etc.

[AricC]

HI

I want to display the contents of a big XML inside a text area so that the user would be able to edit it. But the XML consists of characters such as &amp; &quot; which are interpreted by as & and " respectively.
But if this going to be the case the backend systems could not read them. I used <xmp>, but it is already deprecated and further it would not work inside text area. Could somebody help me with this.

in short : &amp; should be displayed as &amp; itself and not & inside the textarea.

Vinoth

Maybe this is more of an XML question?

[rite2vinoth]

javascript I am sure can do the proper character escaping, but I don't know how to do it myself. You can also do it server side with PHP or perl or other scripting language. Bascially the & symbol needs to converted to &amp; so &amp; would become &amp;amp; etc etc etc.

Yeah.Basically the round about would be to do a replace all of &amp; with &amp;amp; and so on which we eventually did in the server side. But I wanted to know if anything could be done in the client side itself.

Thanks a lot anyways.

[rite2vinoth]

Maybe this is more of an XML question?

Not necessarily. The question is about the browser marking up the character sets and predominanty HTML stuff and javascript.

thanks

[KevinADC]

Yeah.Basically the round about would be to do a replace all of &amp; with &amp;amp; and so on which we eventually did in the server side. But I wanted to know if anything could be done in the client side itself.

Thanks a lot anyways.

I am pretty sure javascript can do the escaping, but I don't know how to do that or if in fact it can be done. Ask in the javascripting forum. As far as the browser itself goes, there is no mechanism I know of to do what you want.

[rite2vinoth]

I am pretty sure javascript can do the escaping, but I don't know how to do that or if in fact it can be done. Ask in the javascripting forum. As far as the browser itself goes, there is no mechanism I know of to do what you want.

Thanks Kevin for that. :-)

[srinivasang87]

I am pretty sure javascript can do the escaping, but I don't know how to do that or if in fact it can be done. Ask in the javascripting forum. As far as the browser itself goes, there is no mechanism I know of to do what you want.

I thought on the same lines. But javascript doesnt do anything special here!
These are the things I tried..

1. s=escape('&amp;');
document.writeln("escaped string : "+s);

t=unescape('&amp;');
document.writeln("unescaped string : "+t);

Both returned '&'

2. <xmp>&amp;</xmp> OR <pre>&amp;</pre>
Both were displayed AS IS (ALONG WITH TAGS) inside the text area. But <xmp> did work OUTSIDE the textarea. But not a great idea as its already deprecated!

3. <plaintext> -- NEVER use this! It will BREAK all the HTML code after the <PLAINTEXT> tag..... All the remaining HTML will be displayed AS IS to the user..

[KevinADC]

OK, but who said anything about using the <plaintext> tag?

[drhowarddrfine]

<plaintext>? Are we making up elements as we go along?

You should carry on this javascript discussion on the javascript board.

[KevinADC]

<plaintext> is a legitimate html tag, or maybe I don't understand your comment.

[drhowarddrfine]

No wonder I never heard of it. It was "obsoleted" in HTML 2.0 and listed as deprecated in 3.0 and 3.2. Only some browsers support it but IE and Firefox do not from what I read.

[mrhoo]

I don't know if rite2 ever got an answer, but if you fetch any text file,
including xml,with an xhtmlHTTPRequest 'GET', and set the value of the textarea to the response text returned, the literal text will be displayed in the text area- &amps; <'s, and all.

[KevinADC]

No wonder I never heard of it. It was "obsoleted" in HTML 2.0 and listed as deprecated in 3.0 and 3.2. Only some browsers support it but IE and Firefox do not from what I read.

Deprecated is not the same as obsolete, although I believe I understand what you are saying. Even before the tag was deprecated it had no pratical use. I think it was mostly used by mischief makers with great results on unsuspecting html enabled forums, guestbooks, and such.

IE and FireFox do support it, but might not if the DTD is set properly.

[AricC]

We moving this to javascript? I believe the escape character in JS is \

[rite2vinoth]

We moving this to javascript? I believe the escape character in JS is \

Guys !! Thanks a ton for all of your suggestions. In fact we took the fool proof solution of going into the server side.

Mr.Moderator.How can i trace this thread in the JS forum ?

Vinoth

[acoder]

Mr.Moderator.How can i trace this thread in the JS forum?

If you want to find your posts/threads, go to your Control Panel (top right-hand corner) and subscribed threads. Alternatively, go to your own user profile (if you can find one of your posts), then click on 'Find all posts by...'.