Escape Quotes In HTML5 Data Attribute Using Javascript
I'm using jQuery's .data() to work with custom HTML5 data attributes where the value of the attribute needs to be able to contain both single quotes and double quotes:
<p class="example" data-example="She said "WTF" on last night's show.">
I know using character codes like " in the data attribute value could make the above work, but I can't always control how the values are inputted. Plus, I need to be able to use HTML tags in the markup, like this:
<p class="example" data-example="
She said "<abbr title="What The F***">WTF</abbr>" on last night's show.
">
If some form of .replace() is the answer, then it needs to be done before the value is read by .data()—maybe by applying it across the entire <body>?
Normal backslash escaping like <abbr title="te\'st">WTF</abbr> doesn't work either.
Ideally this would have the flexibility to work w/ both:
data-example="..."
and
data-example='...'
But if it's only possible one way then I could at least roll with that. Ideas?
Update - some more context:
I'm working on this for responsejs.com. An actual application of this might be to only load a sidebar for browsers above a certain width (and have this handled in the browser rather than PHP). In the case of WordPress for example, the sidebar could contain widgets, images, etc. The quotes within PHP tags are a non-issue b/c they are parsed into HTML before they get to the browser. Example:
<aside id="primary" class="sidebar"
data-oweb='
<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'primary' ); ?>
'
>
optional default markup for mobile and no-js browsers here
</aside>
Answer
There is no way around it, you have to escape the values properly, or the HTML can't be parsed properly. You can't use Javascript to correct the code after it is parsed, because then it has already failed.
Your example with proper HTML encoding would be:
<p class="example" data-example="She said "<abbr title="What The F***">WTF</abbr>" on last night's show.">
You can't use backslash to escape characters, because it's not Javascript code. You use HTML entities to escape characters in HTML code.
If you can't control how the data is input, then you are screwed. You simply have to find a way to take control over it.