Within the array that I retrieve from mysql is a text field that contains an ellipsis as part of the entry. While mysqli will print out the array record properly, when I try to encode it to a json string (json_encode), I get an error...actually nothing happens. At this point I know enough about json to be dangerous. Hopefully somebody has an answer to this. In the meantime I found the offending records and have changed the ellipsis (...) to colon-minus (:-) which seems to work. For presentation sake, I'd like to include the ellipsis.
Thanks,
KCT3937
"At this point I know enough about json to be dangerous." as well so my suggestion is to work around the problem if you can't find a "proper" solution.
Replace the offending character with something else before encoding and replace it back to the ellipsis in the JavaScript that receives the response.
If you are using php you may also want to look into JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE. Check the json_encode online manual for more details.
Another thing to check is verify that your data is UTF-8 encoded.
Related
I'm using a 3rd party API that seems to return its data with the entity codes already in there. Such as The Lion’s Pride.
If I print the string as-is from the API it renders just fine in the browser (in the example above it would put in an apostrophe). However, I can't trust that the API will always use the entities in the future so I want to use something like htmlentities or htmlspecialchars myself before I print it. The problem with this is that it will encode the ampersand in the entity code again and the end result will be The Lion’s Pride in the HTML source which doesn't render anything user friendly.
How can I use htmlentities or htmlspecialchars only if it hasn't already been used on the string? Is there a built-in way to detect if entities are already present in the string?
No one seems to be answering your actual question, so I will
How can I use htmlentities or htmlspecialchars only if it hasn't already been used on the string? Is there a built-in way to detect if entities are already present in the string?
It's impossible. What if I'm making an educational post about HTML entities and I want to actually print this on the screen:
The Lion’s Pride
... it would need to be encoded as...
The Lion&;#8217;s Pride
But what if that was the actual string we wanted to print on the string ? ... and so on.
Bottom line is, you have to know what you've been given and work from there – which is where the advice from the other answers comes in – which is still just a workaround.
What if they give you double-encoded strings? What if they start wrapping the html-encoded strings in XML? And then wrap that in JSON? ... And then the JSON is converted to binary strings? the possibilities are endless.
It's not impossible for the API you depend on to suddenly switch the output type, but it's also a pretty big violation of the original contract with your users. To some extent, you have to put some trust in the API to do what it says it's going to do. Unit/Integration tests make up the rest of the trust.
And because you could never write a program that works for any possible change they could make, it's senseless to try to anticipate any change at all.
Decode the string, then re-encode the entities. (Using html_entity_decode())
$string = htmlspecialchars(html_entity_decode($string));
https://eval.in/662095
There is NO WAY to do what you ask for!
You must know what kind of data is the service giving back.
Anything else would be guessing.
Example:
what if the service is giving back & but is not escaping ?
you would guess it IS escaping so you would wrongly interpret as & while the correct value is &
I think the best solution, is first to decode all html entities/special chars from the original string, and then html encode the string again.
That way you will end up with a correctly encoded string, no matter if the original string was encoded or not.
You also have the option of using htmlspecialchars_decode();
$string = htmlspecialchars_decode($string);
It's already in htmlentities:
php > echo htmlentities('Hi&mom', ENT_HTML5, ini_get('default_charset'), false);
Hi&mom
php > echo htmlentities('Hi&mom', ENT_HTML5, ini_get('default_charset'), true);
Hi&;mom
Just use the [optional]4th argument to NOT double-encode.
So I have a json encoded string by a system, Which for a reason I cannot touch.
See below.
[{"item0":"sometext","item1":"sometext too but i have "quoted string" inside of me"}]
so now my problem is, using json_decode($json_array_above); gives me NULL output as it cannot convert the quoted string...
I try some preg_replace code but am too noob to findout how to replace the quoted string and introduce escape char which will look like this \"quoted string\". Seriously, I cannot comprehend with the preg_replace with this condition.. where you will find the occurence of double qoute inside the json_encoded string.. Please enlighten me.
I have tried other questions available here but my understanding was not enough.
Also, pls note that I cannot touch the 1 encoding the json object as it is provided by a 3rd party system..
TIA.
EDIT:
Thanks to those who enlighten me...
So this was not possible and I have to drop this one and try to contact the system developer to correct the json encoded string they provided as it was the best option.
Which for a reason I cannot touch
Then you're stuffed. It's broken, and you can't reliably fix it.
I try some preg_replace code
You can't. There's no way for you to know whether a " is actually meant to terminate the string, or meant to be a character in the string.
Stop all attempts to fix this at your end. The end sending you the invalid JSON is the problem. If you "can't touch" it, contact and berate someone who can until they fix it. You might take it as an opportunity to teach them that this is why don't hand-create JSON, or create it with string concatenation, etc. Instead, you build a structure, then use a proper JSON serializer to create the JSON, which will (in this case) put in the necessary escapes (backslashes) so that it looks like this:
[{"item0":"sometext","item1":"sometext too but i have \"quoted string\" inside of me"}]
I am working with an XML feed that has, as one of it's nodes, a URL string similar to the following:
http://aflite.co.uk/track/?aid=13414&mid=32532&dl=http://www.google.com/&aref=chris
I understand that ampersands cause a lot of problems in XML and should be escaped by using & instead of a naked &. I therefore changed the php to read as follows:
<node><?php echo ('http://aflite.co.uk/track/?aid=13414&mid=32532&dl=http://www.google.com/&aref=chris'); ?></node>
However when this generates the XML feed, the string appears with the full &
and so the actual URL does not work. Apologies if this is a very basic misunderstanding but some guidance would be great.
I've also tried using %26 instead of & but still getting the same problem.
If you are inserting something into XML/HTML you should always use the htmlspecialchars function. this will escape your strings into correct XML syntax.
but you are running into a second problem.
your have added a second url to the first one.
this need also escaped into url syntax.
for this you need to use urlencode.
<node><?php echo htmlspecialchars('http://aflite.co.uk/track/?aid=13414&mid=32532&aref=chris&dl='.urlencode('http://www.google.com/')); ?></node>
& is correct for escaping ampersands in an XML document. The example you've given should work.
You state that it doesn't work, but you haven't stated what application you're using, or in what way it doesn't work. What exactly happens when you click the link? Do the & strings end up in the browser's URL field? If that's the case, it sounds like a fault with the software you've viewing the XML with. Have you tried looking at the XML in another application to see if the problem is consistent?
To answer the final part of your question: %26 would definitely not work for you -- this would be what you'd use if your URL parameters needed to contain ampersands. Say for example in aref=chris, if the name chris were to an ampersand (lets say the username was chris&bob), then that ampersand would need to be escaped using %26 so that the URL parser didn't see it as starting a new URL parameter.
Hope that helps.
I am having a problem passing a json string back to a php script to process.
I have a json string that's been created by using dojo.toJson() that contains a / and looks like this:
[{"id":"2","company":"My Company / Corporation","jobrole":"Consultant","jobtitle":"System Integration Engineer"}]
When I pass the string back to the php script it get's chopped at the / and creates a malformed json string, which then means I can't convert it into a php array.
What is the best way of escaping the / in this string? I was looking at regular expressions and doing a string.replace() however my regex isn't that strong, and I'm not sure if there are better ways of doing this?
Many thanks
You shouldn't need to do anything special to represent a / in JSON - a string can contain any character except a " or (when not used to start an escape sequence) \.
The problem is possibly therefore in:
the way you parse the JSON server side
the way your parse the HTTP data to get the JSON string
the way you encode the string before making the HTTP request
(I'd bet on it being the last of those options).
I would start by using a tool such as LiveHttpHeaders or Charles Proxy to see exactly what data is sent to the server.
(I'd also expand the question with the code you use to make the request, and the code you use to parse it at the other end).
\/. Take a look here. The documentation is really easy to read, concise and clear. But unescaped / should still be valid in JSON's string so maybe your bug is somewhere else?
Ok. Anyway.
When passing variables to PHP don't use JSON - it's good for passing variables other way.
Instead you better use http://api.dojotoolkit.org/jsdoc/1.3/dojo.objectToQuery method and on PHP side parse standard PHP $_GET variables.
EDIT: Ok, I'm 'lost in the woods' here also, but here's a tip - check if you don't have some mod_rewrite rules in action here. Kind of seems like that.
Also, if you can send me the URL which gave you 404 (you can cut out domain part, i'm interested in script filename and all afterwards) maybe I can give you more detailed answer.
To be clear, whether you choose to send JSON to PHP or use regular form values is a matter of preference. It /should/ work either way. It sounds like you aren't url-encoding the JSON at the client-side so the server-side is treating / as a path delimiter. In which case its borked before json_decode gets to it.
so, try encodeURIComponent( dojo.toJson(stuff) )
json_encode() used to escape forward slashes. like this:
prompt> json_encode(json_decode('"A/B"'));
string(6) ""A\/B""
JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES was added in PHP5.4 to suppress this behavior.
Annoying brain numbing problem.
I have two functions to check the length of a string (primarily, the js one truncates as well) heres the one in Javascript:
$('textarea#itemdescription').keyup(function() {
var charLength = $(this).val().length;
// Displays count
$('span#charCount').css({'color':'#666'});
$('span#charCount').html(255 - charLength);
if($(this).val().length >= 240){
$('span#charCount').css({'color':'#FF0000'});
}
// Alerts when 250 characters is reached
if($(this).val().length >= 255){
$('span#charCount').css({'color':'#FF0000'});
$('span#charCount').html('<strong>0</strong>');
var text = $('textarea#itemdescription').val().substring(0,255)
$('textarea#itemdescription').val(text);
}
});
And here is my PHP to double check:
if(strlen($_POST["description"])>255){
echo "Description must be less than ".strlen($_POST["description"])." characters";
exit();
}
I'm using jQuery Ajax to post the values from the textarea. However my php validation says the strlen() is longer than my js is essentially saying. So for example if i type a solid string and it says 0 or 3 chars left till 255. I then click save and the php gives me the length as being 261.
Any ideas?
Is it to do with special characters, bit sizes that js reads differently or misses out? Or is it to do with something else? Maybe its ill today!... :P
Update:
I added var_dump($_POST['description'])
to see what was passed and it was returning escape slashes e.g. what\'s going on? I have tried adding stripslashes(); to no avail... where are they coming from?
UPDATE 2 - PROBLEM SOLVED:
Basically I think I just realised my server has magic quotes turned on... grr
So I have stripped slashes before processing now. Bit annoying but it will have to do!!
Thanks for your help!
Thanks,
Stefan
The easiest way to debug this is simply from your PHP script, by using:
var_dump($_POST['description']
I suggest you also use view source in your browser to see any escape code, special char codes, etc...
It would help if you posted more of your front-end code, especially where you are doing the actual POST. That said, are you sure that keyup is called every time? If the user just pastes text into the box have you verified it is still called?
Also keep in mind that JavaScript is not good enough to guarantee that a string will be less than a given length. A user could disable JavaScript, and a savvy "user" can send their own POST request with more than 255 chars.
I suspect that few characters are line breaks (you say you use textarea) that are ignored while you validate using javascript.
I see 2 things that might be causing your problem.
firstly substring(0,255) returns 256 characters
secondly magic_quotes might be turned on in php.ini, PHP tries to give you escaped strings but doesn't do it right all the time
edit
doh didnt re-read the substring definition, ignore the first one but magic_quotes might be on check that one
If you use UTF-8 encoding, PHP strlen() is counting the bytes, not the characters. If you have anything non-ASCII, this will happen. Use mb_strlen(). Magic quotes can add a few characters also.