Replacing characters in an "ask" editor variable

[stdu]

Hi!

Were using the editor variable in our framwork (for Author 14.2)

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${ask('Input URL', url, '')}

to offer our users the possibility to inserts links in documents. Sometimes the URLs contains the character "&". If this is the case, the functions prohibit the insertion (due to XML rules). It would be nice if the function could replacing "&" with "&" (and other possible problematic characters) to allow such actions. Is this possible?

Thx & Greets,
Stefan

PS: It seems, that with the type "generic" Oxygen checks also the insertion of non-valid characters.

[Radu]

Hi Stefan,

I think you are right, I added an improvement request to our issues list to XML-escape the URL's value when the $ask editor variable is used from a code template or as a parameter to an AuthorOperation. You are using it as a parameter passed to an Author Operation, right?

As a workaround of course you can implement your own Author Operation and show your own Java Swing-based dialog to the user, then use our API to insert the value.

About this remark:

It seems, that with the type "generic" Oxygen checks also the insertion of non-valid characters.

Do you mean that when you use something like:

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${ask('Input text', '')}

you would also want the inserted characters to be automatically XML-escaped?

Regards,
Radu

[stdu]

Hi Radu,

thx for adding the feature request! That would be great!
And you're right: we're using it as parameter passed to an Author Operation (SourroundWithFragment). At the moment I think, that all content in ask-Variables should be escaped, because it has to due to XML rules ... or is there any counter-argument?

Thx & kind regards,
Stefan

[Radu]

Hi Stefan,

We'll consider this, I assume that most of the times you use the $ask to request a value for a certain attribute, right?

Regards,
Radu

[stdu]

Hi Radu,

sorry for the late reply - I was in holiday for the last two weeks.
And, yes, that's right: we use it most of the times for attribute values.

I've seen your update changelog from yesterday:

Author/Form Controls: Entering XML reserved characters (&, <) in a form control that is editing the value of an attribute, would result in an invalid XML document.

Do you have already solve this issue with the last update?

Greets,
Stefan

[alex_jitianu]

Hi Stefan,

That note actually refers to a different issue: while editing attributes with form controls, reserved characters (&, <) were not escaped. The fix to the issue from this thread is not present in the update.

Best regards,
Alex

[Radu]

Hi Stefan,

Oxygen 16.0 which was released a couple of days ago should have a fix for your improvement request to automatically escape content inserted by the user using the ask editor variable prompt dialog.

Regards,
Radu

[stdu]

Hi Radu,

in 17.1 the Author denied to insert unescaped ampersands (&), but doesn't replace them? Is this intended? Or do I have to activate some flag elsewhere?

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Radu]

Hi Stefan,

Just tested an Author InsertFragmentOperation with an XML like:

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<p audience="${ask('Message', url)}"/>

and you are right, the & should be automatically escaped.
We'll fix this, I will try to integrate a fix also in the next Oxygen 17.1 minor bug fix release.
I'll update this thread when a fix is available.

Regards,
Radu

[stdu]

Cool, thank you, Radu!

[ionela]

Hi,

Just to update the thread, this problem has been resolved in the latest maintenance build of oXygen 17.1, 2016020417(released on February 5th):

Author: URL values returned by the ${ask} editor variable used in AuthorOperation parameters were not automatically XML-escaped

You can download it from our web site:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html

The list of bug-fixes can be found here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/build_history.html#2016020417

You can follow the release/build RSS feed here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/rssBuildID.xml

Let us know if you encounter further problems with this new build.

Regards,
Ionela