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JavaScript

Posted by carlflynn
carlflynn
Courses Plus Student 2,198 Points

JavaScript Deep Dive Semantic Question

Hi There,

I'm working my way through the JavaScript Deep Dive, and just completed the section on Strings. During the lecture, Jim touched on how the use of quotation marks can mess up the string -- for example
var x='Jim's house is big';

The solution he mentions is
var x='Jim\'s house is big';

Is there a reason why one couldn't just use
var x='Jim's house is big' ? where the apostrophe is &#39 ;

Is it considered to be poor form to integrate HTML escape characters into JavaScript, or are both viable?

Only reason I ask is that I have most HTML special characters memorized, and may use them out of habit, as I progress through the Deep Dive. Want to make sure that I can break the habit early on, if it turns out to be a problem.

Thanks!

2 Answers

Matthew McCulloch
Matthew McCulloch
5,341 Points

It depends on the situation, the thing to remember is that they are not equivalent strings.

For instance(from javascript console):

<code>

>var x='Jim\'s house is big';
undefined
 >x;
 "Jim's house is big"
 >var y='Jim&#39s house is big';
 undefined
 >y;
 "Jim&#39s house is big"
 >x == y;
 false

</code>

I would say you should stick with using the non html encoded string, now if you want to inject that string into an html element you have two choices. Either manually html encode it prior to injecting it, like you were suggesting or locate/create a premade js function to html encode the string as you are injecting it. My gut says handing it over to a function would be easier to maintain, however I honestly don't know of a premade script off the top of my head that would fit the bill.

JQuery has html encoding/decoding functions, but I'm not aware of how to use those with a javascript variable off the top of my head. It would be something interesting to look into though!

Edit: code display is giving me a hard time -_-

carlflynn
carlflynn
Courses Plus Student 2,198 Points

Thank you for the response Matthew; I hadn't considered the two as being two separate strings, for validation purposes. You raise a really good point!

Code display gave me a pretty hard time too, haha.

Cheers!

Adam Moore
Adam Moore
15,825 Points
Adam Moore
Adam Moore
15,825 Points

That's a good question. I'm really not sure what js does with those characters. I imagine it will render them fine just as HTML does. Probably just easier to use and explain the other way.