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RE: Parsing Input Data for well-formedness
- To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
- Subject: RE: [xsl] Parsing Input Data for well-formedness
- From: "McKeever, Marty" <marty dot mckeever at bankofamerica dot com>
- Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 16:24:46 -0400
- Reply-To: xsl-list at lists dot mulberrytech dot com
I've two possible scenarios to worry about:
1. data coming from a database:
<p><%= bean.getCompanyName() %></p>
or
<input type="text" value="<%=bean.getLoanType()%>" />
2. form data input by the user
<p><%= request.getParameter("Comments") %></p>
so what i'm hoping for is some kind of XMLSafe(String) method that will
guarantee that the output is well formed -- but wont add anything it doesnt
need to.
String Comments = "That's all, Over & Out";
XMLSafe(Comments) -> "That's all, Over & Out"
You never know what a user mught type into a textarea for comments. I want
to guarantee that it can be displayed upon receipt. I guess i'll have to
write (yet another) wheel from scratch...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wendell Piez [mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:41 PM
> To: xsl-list@lists.mulberrytech.com
> Subject: Re: [xsl] Parsing Input Data for well-formedness
>
>
> Marty,
>
> The only characters you need to worry about are '&' and '<'. XML is
> deliberately put together this way.
>
> Why are double escapings a problem? you just have to find,
> and escape, any
> '&' or '<' that is not a markup delimiter.
>
> How bad the problem is depends on what's coming in. If it's
> well-formed XML
> (which you've said it isn't, I know), all '&' and '<' are markup
> delimiters except those in CDATA marked sections. If it's
> plain text, none
> of them will be markup delimiters since there's no markup. If it's
> something else, things get trickier. HTML would be such a format, or
> non-well-formed pseudo-XML fragments. In this case, you need
> to know not
> only what you want from these characters (that's pretty easy:
> & or
> <), but also what you want to happen to your markup (and
> how you tell
> it's markup).
>
> Which of these do you have?
>
> Cheers,
> Wendell
>
> At 01:45 PM 10/9/01, you wrote:
> >When building an XML file from external data, we need to
> validate that each
> >input string is well-formed. The specific situation is a
> Loan Type field
> >which returns "A&D". Before we populate our XML file, we
> need to convert
> >this to "A&D". Otherwise the XSLT will complain and not
> render the
> >final page.
> >
> >Before we build a utility class for checking/correcting
> these (all?!?) input
> >strings, i have to ask the obvious -- has anyone already
> created something
> >like this? Certainly there are many other characters we will need to
> >consider, and we'll have to watch out for double-escaping things
> >(A&amp;D).
> >
> >Must i reinvent this wheel?
>
>
> ======================================================================
> Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
> Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
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