I'm collecting text through a web form and noticing that when it is collected by my Perl CGI all instances of "+" are transformed into " ". I run the text through a JavaScript escape before submission, but escape seems to leave + unaltered.
There must be something really obvious that I'm missing... how do I send the string "2 + 2 = 4" through and not have it arrive as "2 2 = 4"?
The escape and unescape functions do not work properly for non-ASCII characters and have been deprecated. In JavaScript 1.5 and later, use encodeURI, decodeURI, encodeURIComponent, and decodeURIComponent.
Replace escape with encodeURIComponent
You can encode + as %2B, as seen in: http://www.google.com/search?q=2+%2B+2
You '+', in the URL, should be encoded as %2B :
http://www.example.com/myscript.ext?a=2%20%2B%202%20=%204
Will give a = 2 + 2 = 4
In Javascript, this means using the encodeURIComponent function : this portion of code :
encodeURIComponent('2 + 2 = 4')
will give :
"2%20%2B%202%20%3D%204"
Note the + is encoded.
While this one :
escape('2 + 2 = 4')
would only give :
"2%20+%202%20%3D%204"
Note the + is not encoded.
I do not know what you mean by using JavaScript escape. Browsers will properly encode form field values and CGI.pm will properly decode them.
For example,
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;
use CGI;
my $cgi = CGI->new;
if ( $cgi->param ) {
process_form($cgi);
}
else {
show_form($cgi);
}
sub process_form {
my ($cgi) = @_;
print $cgi->header('text/plain'),
$cgi->param('entry'), "\n";
}
sub show_form {
my ($cgi) = @_;
print $cgi->header, <<EO_HTML;
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html><head><title>Test +</title></head>
<body><form>
<input name="entry"><input type="submit">
</form></body></html>
EO_HTML
}
The output I get from submitting this form with 2+2=4 in the entry field is:
2+2=4