Decoding Special Characters...

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

AppDeveloper - 27 Jan 2007 00:43 GMT

Hi All,

I have some raw data coming from a column in a database that contains the
following data (code):

<table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"
bgcolor="white"><tr><td width="30%">&nbsp;</td><td
width="70%">&nbsp;</td></tr><TR><TD>Name:</TD><<TD>Email:</TD> (bla, bla, bla and so on...)

Unfortunately, when I query the data and output it, it returns (outputs) the
following:

<table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"
bgcolor="white"><tr><td width="30%"></td><td
width="70%"></td></tr><tr><td>[B]Name:[/B]</td><<td>[B]Email:[/B]</td> (bla, bla, bla and so on...)

I've tried to use the URLDecode function to decode it but doesn't work. Is
there a way or a CF function that I can use to convert these special charaters,
"<", ">", "&nbsp;" to " < ", " > ", " " respectively without using
the ReplaceNoCase function which is what I'm doing now (see below):

<CFSET HTML_Content = Trim(GetHTMLContent.HTML_Content)>
<CFSET HTML_Content = ReplaceNoCase(HTML_Content,"<","<","ALL")>
<CFSET HTML_Content = ReplaceNoCase(HTML_Content,">",">","ALL")>
<CFSET HTML_Content = ReplaceNoCase(HTML_Content,"&##39;","'","ALL")>
<CFSET HTML_Content = ReplaceNoCase(HTML_Content,"&nbsp;"," ","ALL")>
<CFOUTPUT>#HTML_Content#</CFOUTPUT>

Many thanks in advance!

Reply to this Message

BKBK - 27 Jan 2007 11:01 GMT

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/coldfusion/7/htmldocs/00000506.htm

<cfset rawData='<table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0"
width="100%" bgcolor="white"><tr><td
width="30%">&nbsp;</td><td
width="70%">&nbsp;</td></tr><TR><TD>Name:</TD><<TD><fo
nt face="arial" size="2">Email:</TD>
(bla, bla, bla and so on...)'>

without htmlEditFormat: 
<cfoutput>#rawData#</cfoutput>

with htmlEditFormat: 
<cfoutput>#htmlEditFormat(rawData)#</cfoutput>

Reply to this Message

AppDeveloper - 29 Jan 2007 21:49 GMT

Hi BKBK,

Your suggestion is not working. Any other advice?

Many thanks!

Reply to this Message

BKBK - 30 Jan 2007 05:54 GMT

Copy-and-paste the code I've given, and save it as [i]entityTest.cfm[/i]. Run it and you will find that it works.

Reply to this Message

AppDeveloper - 30 Jan 2007 19:55 GMT

Hi BKBK,

I copied your code and ran it, but it shows this "<table cellspacing="0"
border="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" bgcolor="white"><tr><td
width="30%"> </td><td width="70%"> </td></tr><TR><TD>[B]Name:[/B]</TD><<TD>[B]Email:[/B]</TD> (bla, bla, bla and so on...) " when running
it on the browser. I want the code rendered out as an html page with 2 columns
"Name" and "Email" in a table.

Thanks.

Reply to this Message

BKBK - 30 Jan 2007 21:24 GMT

It wasn't clear to me you wanted to produce a table. Here then is an idea

<cfset rawData='<table cellspacing="0" border="1" cellpadding="0" width="100%"
bgcolor="white"><tr><td width="30%">&nbsp;</td><td
width="70%">&nbsp;</td></tr><TR><TD>Name:</TD><TD>Email:</TD></TR></table> '>
<cfset rawData = replaceNoCase(rawData,"<","<","all")>
<cfset rawData = replaceNoCase(rawData,">",">","all")>
<cfset rawData = replaceNoCase(rawData,"&","&","all")>

<cfoutput>#rawData#</cfoutput>

Reply to this Message

[CJ] - 31 Jan 2007 00:54 GMT

as far as i know, there's no built in function to unescape the escaped HTML
characters.

i think your replace() functions will be the way to go. I know it's not
pretty...but you could always just wrap that into a UDF so at least it's
modular.

Reply to this Message

BKBK - 31 Jan 2007 06:22 GMT

AppDeveloper, I realize just now that what you had done [i]did work[/i], and
you were only looking for an alternative. I missed your point right from the
beginning. Sorry about that. As they say, when one picks the wrong branch at a
junction, any further step only takes one further away from one's destination.

Reply to this Message

Webmaster Forum / ColdFusion / Getting Started / January 2007

Decoding Special Characters...