String cuts off after &

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May 8th, 2008, 07:35 PM

Saphirix

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String cuts off after &

I have a problem with using & in a string coming from a form field.

For example, I have a <textarea> field setup like this:

Code:

<textarea id="contents" name="contents"></textarea>

And if inside I input the following: Jack & Daniels and I then after a clicking for a submission, it does a:

Code:

div.element.innerHTML = document.getElementById('contents').value;

I would get the results looking like: Jack and everything after the & would just be cutoff completely.

Now I have absolutely NO idea what's going on there. If I did a:

Code:

alert(document.getElementById('contents').value);

That would actually pop-up a dialog box with: Jack & Daniels like it should...

Do I need to format the string in someway before I pass it into the DIV?

I thought about doing a ".replace()" on the & but I then I started thinking ahead, what if I come up with more characters I put into the fields and they also cut off the string? I am hoping to find an overall fix for this, I just dunno what to specifically look for.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

May 8th, 2008, 10:17 PM

essee

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Hi,

Not sure if this

Code:

div.element.innerHTML = document.getElementById('contents').value;

is your actual code or not but you should be referencing elements by id like

Code:

document.getElementById('element').innerHTML = document.getElementById('contents').value;

Should work fine. And running the code like that worked no problems for me with all characters.

Edit:
I didn't actually submit the form in testing because I have no idea what your doing with it. You probably need to save the value of the text area to a variable and then on the new page after submission call another function to show it in the 'element' div.

Last edited by essee : May 8th, 2008 at 10:22 PM.

May 9th, 2008, 01:04 AM

jsKid

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You might as well cover any future development by replacing all
instances of the ampersand with

Code:

& a m p ;

__________________
Download [ Fx | Op ] Validate [ Markup | Css ]

Code:

javascript per the (do ... while loop)
Almost sounds like an introduction... haha great !

May 9th, 2008, 03:38 PM

Saphirix

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Thanks for the inputs... I used "escape()" and that worked for the &, but now there's a new problem... when the field contains a | it will cut off from there...

Ugh!

May 10th, 2008, 01:03 PM

romario

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i am no javascript expert but try this: http://www.the-art-of-web.com/javascript/escape/

one of those functions may work esp encodeURIComponent

May 13th, 2008, 03:19 PM

Saphirix

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Quote:

Originally Posted by romario

i am no javascript expert but try this: http://www.the-art-of-web.com/javascript/escape/

one of those functions may work esp encodeURIComponent

Thanks Romario, thanks everyone I got this solved!

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