Escape quotes in JavaScript
I'm outputting values from a database (it isn't really open to public entry, but it is open to entry by a user at the company -- meaning, I'm not worried about XSS).
I'm trying to output a tag like this:
<a href="" onclick="DoEdit('DESCRIPTION');">Click Me</a>
DESCRIPTION is actually a value from the database that is something like this:
Prelim Assess "Mini" Report
I've tried replacing " with \", but no matter what I try, Firefox keeps chopping off my JavaScript call after the space after the word Assess, and it is causing all sorts of issues.
I must bemissing the obvious answer, but for the life of me I can't figure it out.
Anyone care to point out my idiocy?
Here is the entire HTML page (it will be an ASP.NET page eventually, but in order to solve this I took out everything else but the problem code)
<html>
<body>
<a href="#" onclick="DoEdit('Preliminary Assessment \"Mini\"'); return false;">edit</a>
</body>
</html>
Answer
You need to escape the string you are writing out into DoEdit to scrub out the double-quote characters. They are causing the onclick HTML attribute to close prematurely.
Using the JavaScript escape character, \, isn't sufficient in the HTML context. You need to replace the double-quote with the proper XML entity representation, ".