Re: formatting response text for AJAX widget

The JavaScript code you are sending (as seen by using print $response) is:

$('override_...').innerHTML="<a href='#' onClick='javascript:makeForm(
+"...", "...", "...");'>...</a>';
[download]

but it should be

$('override_...').innerHTML="<a href='#' onClick='javascript:makeForm(
+\"...\", \"...\", \"...\");'>...</a>";
[download]

The first double-quote is wrongly closed with a single quote, and you have unescaped double-quotes.

Other potential problems:

Is $('override_123') valid JavaScript? I've never seen that syntax before, but I have little JavaScript experience.
Are $componentId, $componentType and $newTitle properly escaped to be used in a JavaScript double-quoted string? (\ => \\, " => \")
Are $componentId, $componentType and $newTitle properly escaped to be used in an HTML single-quoted value? (& => &, ' => ')
Is $newTitle properly escaped to be used in HTML? (& => &, < => <)

Update: The following addresses quoting issues:

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::Entities qw( encode_entities );

sub js_from_text {
   for (@_ ? $_[0] : $_) {
      s/([\\"])/\\$1/g;
      return qq{"$_"};
   }
}

sub html_from_text {
   for (@_ ? $_[0] : $_) {
      return encode_entities($_);
   }
}

my ($text_componentId, $text_componentType, $text_newTitle) = ...;

my $js_component     = js_from_text("override_$text_componentId");
my $js_componentId   = js_from_text($text_componentId);
my $js_componentType = js_from_text($text_componentType);
my $js_newTitle      = js_from_text($text_newTitle);
my $js_onClick       = "makeForm($js_componentId, $js_componentType, $
+js_newTitle);";
my $html_onClick     = html_from_text($js_onClick);
my $html_newTitle    = html_from_text($text_newTitle);
my $html             = qq{<a href="#" onClick="javascript:$html_onClic
+k">$html_newTitle</a>};
my $js_html          = js_from_text($html);
my $js_response      = "\$($js_component).innerHTML = $js_html;";

print("$js_response\n");
[download]

There is a situation where hungarian notation is very useful. Making Wrong Code Look Wrong is a worthwhile read.

Comment on Re: formatting response text for AJAX widget Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: formatting response text for AJAX widget by Fletch (Bishop) on Aug 04, 2006 at 19:27 UTC
The `$('someId')` is syntactic sugar provided by the Prototype library to fetch the DOM object for the element with that tag. If passed anything rather than a string it returns that object. More info here on the script.aculo.us wiki.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: [OT?] formatting response text for AJAX widget by geektron (Curate) on Aug 04, 2006 at 19:24 UTC
I did just catch the first issue -- the improperly closed double quote. I switched the 'main' quoting back to `qq{}` to ease up on the toothpick syndrome. Fixing that ... didn't help. the values i've been using for the three vars don't need escapes. i can tackle that issue once i have a working repsonseText replacer. they've been simple strings. $('overide_123').innerHTML is valid javascript. the same handler uses it for another (working) part of the application.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: [OT?] formatting response text for AJAX widget by jfluhmann (Scribe) on Aug 04, 2006 at 19:28 UTC
Is it still the same error?	[reply]
Re^2: formatting response text for AJAX widget by geektron (Curate) on Aug 04, 2006 at 20:12 UTC
I already had some initial entity encoding, but .... it seems the " entity still interferes with the javascript quoting ....	[reply]


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