Escaping escaped characters in PHP

toastyman · 5 Feb 2006 at 18:28

The following Javascript code is generated by PHP..

Code:

div = document.getElementById('contentdiv');
div.innerHTML ="<div class="trigger" onClick="showBranch('branch1')">Day 1</div>
		<span class="branch" id="branch1">
		<a href="1">Leg 1</a><br /><a href="2">Leg 2</a><br /><a href="3">Leg 3</a><br />
";

Now I'm guessing that all the double quotes should be escaped like

Code:

div = document.getElementById('contentdiv');
div.innerHTML ="<div class=\"trigger\" onClick=\"showBranch('branch1')\">Day 1</div>
		<span class=\"branch\" id=\"branch1\">
		<a href=\"1\">Leg 1</a><br /><a href=\"2\">Leg 2</a><br /><a href=\"3\">Leg 3</a><br />
";

However, I'm not sure how to do this in PHP, as all of those double quotes have already been escaped..

PHP:

$data .= "	<div class=\"trigger\" onClick=\"showBranch('branch".$dayid."')\">Day ".$dayid."</div>\n";

I know you cant use \\" as that will create a T-STRING error...

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Beansprout · 5 Feb 2006 at 18:49

\\\"

toastyman · 5 Feb 2006 at 19:02

3?! That's just being greedy

However, it's still not liking it. FF returns an error: Unterminated string literal.
This is the code now produced:

Code:

div = document.getElementById('contentdiv');
div.innerHTML ="<div class=\"trigger\" onClick=\"showBranch('branch1')\">Day 1</div>
<span class=\"branch\" id=\"branch1\">
<a href=\"1\">Leg 1</a><br />
<a href=\"2\">Leg 2</a><br />
<a href=\"3\">Leg 3</a><br />";

Augmented · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:59

I might have misunderstood what you're trying to achieve, but use Heredoc syntax to save on escaping in PHP. And then remove the new-lines from the JS innerHTML to get rid of the unterminated literal error:

Code:

$string = <<<JS
	div = document.getElementById('contentdiv');
	div.innerHTML = '<div class="trigger" onClick="showBranch(\'branch1\')">Day 1</div><span class="branch" id="branch1"><a href="1">Leg 1</a><br /><a href="2">Leg 2</a><br /><a href="3">Leg 3</a><br />';
JS;

Or if you wish to keep the multiple lines for your innerHTML assignment, then use + to continue to assignment over several lines:

Code:

$string = <<<JS
	div = document.getElementById('contentdiv');
	div.innerHTML = '<div class="trigger" onClick="showBranch(\'branch1\')">Day 1</div>'+
			'<span class="branch" id="branch1">'+
			'<a href="1">Leg 1</a><br /><a href="2">Leg 2</a><br /><a href="3">Leg 3</a><br />';
JS;

toastyman · 5 Feb 2006 at 22:43

Cheers mate solved it in one. It turned out it was because it was over multiple lines...