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javascriptstring-parsing

Escape html, except when inside [code] [/code] tags

I'd like to parse a string and output it, doing the following:

  • escape html - eg:
    • return this.replace(/&/g,'&amp;').replace(/</g,'&lt;').replace(/>/g,'&gt;');
  • except for text within [code] [/code] tags
  • work for multiple code tags within the string

How do I identify the string inside/outside the tags? I don't need to store the string pieces, just process them and output.

Many thanks

Solution

  • I have written an example below that splits the string at the [code][/code] tags and then escapes all html that is not between those tags, it then puts that array back into a string, using a join command.

    Do note that the program will have unexpected behaviour if one of the [code] tags is missing.

    string = "hello world<b>this is mohammad's amazing code:</b> [code]<br>mohammad<br>is<br>amazing[/code]<br>"
tempString = string.split(/(\[code\])(.+)(\[\/code\])/g)

var isCode = 0
for (var i = 0; i < tempString.length; ++i) {
  if (tempString[i].match(/(\[code\])/g)) {
    //code begins here
    isCode = 1
  } else if (tempString[i].match(/(\[\/code\])/g)) {
    //code ends here
    isCode = 0
  }
  if (isCode == 0) {
    tempString[i]=tempString[i].replace(/&/g, '&amp;').replace(/</g, '&lt;').replace(/>/g, '&gt;');
  }
}
string = tempString.join("")
alert(string)

    This demo can also be played with on jsfiddle