Escaping double quotes in JavaScript onClick event handler

Question

The simple code block below can be served up in a static HTML page but results in a JavaScript error. How should you escape the embedded double quote in the onClick handler (i.e. \"xyz)? Note that the HTML is generated dynamically by pulling data from a database, the data of which is snippets of other HTML code that could have either single or double quotes. It seems that adding a single backslash ahead of the double quote character doesn't do the trick.

<script type="text/javascript">
    function parse(a, b, c) {
        alert(c);
    }
</script>

<a href="#x" onclick="parse('#', false, '<a href=\"xyz'); return false">Test</a>

Answer 1

I think that the best approach is to assign the onclick handler unobtrusively.

Something like this:

window.onload = function(){
    var myLink = document.getElementsById('myLinkId');
    myLink.onclick = function(){ 
        parse('#', false, '<a href="xyz');
        return false;
    }
}

//...


<a href="#" id="myLink">Test</a>

Answer 2

Did you try

\x22

in place of

\"

?

Answer 3

You may also want to try two backslashes (\\") to escape the escape character.

Answer 4

While I agree with CMS about doing this in an unobtrusive manner (via a lib like jquery or dojo), here's what also work:

<script type="text/javascript">
function parse(a, b, c) {
    alert(c);
  }

</script>

<a href="#x" onclick="parse('#', false, 'xyc&quot;foo');return false;">Test</a>

The reason it barfs is not because of JavaScript, it's because of the HTML parser. It has no concept of escaped quotes to it trundles along looking for the end quote and finds it and returns that as the onclick function. This is invalid javascript though so you don't find about the error until JavaScript tries to execute the function..

Answer 5

I am the original poster but google open ID had some problems (ok, I had some problems). Anyway, the \x22 substitution -- on the server side -- works well since the actual value needs to be retained (the alert call was just for example purposes). \x27 can also be substituted for the single quotes.

Answer 6

It needs to be HTML-escaped, not Javascript-escaped. Change \" to ".

Answer 7

Hi Landon9720, Replacing double quotes with \x22 has worked for me too...But tested it only in IE6... Thanks for your info....