Storing HTML: HTML entities being rendered in that raw form

On 09/04/2009 17:27, linnewbie wrote:

I have stored HTML in a text field that I subsequently render on the
web. However when I retrieve and render this data on the web I am
getting the entities being rendered in their raw form, ie, instead of
getting the '&' symbol when '&' is stored I'm getting the 'raw'
'&'.

Can you show us how you're storing the HTML? If you're sending the
ampersands into the database as '&', then that's what's going to get
stored, and so that's what you're going to get back. Postgres doesn't
change '&' -> '&', you'll need to do that yourself before sending it
to the database.

Ray.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
Galway Cathedral Recitals: http://www.galwaycathedral.org/recitals
------------------------------------------------------------------

On Apr 9, 2009, at 9:27 AM, linnewbie wrote:

Hi all,

I have stored HTML in a text field that I subsequently render on the
web. However when I retrieve and render this data on the web I am
getting the entities being rendered in their raw form, ie, instead of
getting the '&' symbol when '&' is stored I'm getting the 'raw'
'&'.

I would be grateful if anyone can point out how I can get around this.

It's a problem in your code, not the database. You're probably
escaping it one time to many or unescaping it one time too few.

Cheers,
Steve

linnewbie wrote:

What I have on disk would be:

<p> Bonnie &amp; Clyde</p>

which would usually be rendered as:

Bonnie & Clype

but this is not happening, it's being rendered
as:

Bonnie &amp; Clyde

There are only three options.
1. That is *not* what you have stored in the database, it's being
escaped on the way in.
2. You aren't displaying what *is* stored in the database, it's being
escaped on the way out.
3. You are rendering it as text, not HTML

Break your problem into pieces and test each in turn. Store exactly that
string and check it with psql. Examine exactly what you have when you
read it from the database. Display two copies - one you have from the
database and one you manually set in a variable. Do they differ?

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd

linnewbie wrote:

On Apr 9, 1:00 pm, st...@blighty.com (Steve Atkins) wrote:

On Apr 9, 2009, at 9:27 AM, linnewbie wrote:

Hi all,
I have stored HTML in a text field that I subsequently render on the
web. However when I retrieve and render this data on the web I am
getting the entities being rendered in their raw form, ie, instead of
getting the '&' symbol when '&amp;' is stored I'm getting the 'raw'
'&amp;'.
I would be grateful if anyone can point out how I can get around this.

It's a problem in your code, not the database. You're probably
escaping it one time to many or unescaping it one time too few.

Cheers,
Steve

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-gene...@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

To clarify, I am not escaping the string in any way.

Say the page I am saving the database is the about us page form a
company website.
First, make a from to create the about us page in a text area field,
then I copy the
html from my text editor and past it ino this text area from. I then
have a cgi script which
takes the contents from the text area field and stores it in the
database.

What I have on disk would be:

................................
..............................
<p> Bonnie &amp; Clyde</p>

which would usually be rendered as:

Bonnie & Clype

but this is not happening, it's being rendered
as:

Bonnie &amp; Clyde

That's because, as someone else suggested, something is quoting the &.
In order to be rendered 'Bonnie &amp; Clyde' by the browser, it needs to be
'Bonnie &amp;amp; Clyde' in the HTML (just view the HTML source from inside
the browser).

You haven't provided any detail on the rendering phase, BTW.

.TM.