Develop Reference

How to you get the contents of an iFrame to insert into a database?

I have created a wysiwyg text editor using an iframe and am trying to save the contents of this.
The HTML for my iframe is:
<iframe name="richTextField" id="wysiwyg" src="page?page_id=3"></iframe>
I am then using a hidden input to submit this to the database:
<input type="hidden" id="text_content" name="text_content" value="">
I am trying to get the contents of this into the value of the input field using JS like this:
$text_content = #wysiwyg.document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].textContent;
$("#text_content").attr("value", $text_content);
If I set $text_content to just a random string it will work but it won't get the contents of the iframe.
I have tried $("#wysiwyg document body").textContent, #wysiwyg.document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].textContent and richTextField.document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].textContent.
richTextField.document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].textContent is actually what I used in the JS for toggling to the source but it will not work when trying to set it as a variable.
Should I be trying to do something like php serialize() to get this as a variable I can work with? Or are the terms I've tried as my selectors just wrong? Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

For future reference, this is what I used:
richTextField.document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].innerHTML;

How to validate or wrap user inputted HTML to fix unclosed tags

I have text boxes in a form where users can input formatted text or raw HTML. It all works fine, however is a user doesn't close a tag (like a bold tag), then it ruins all HTML formatting after it (it all becomes bold).
Is there a way to either validate the user's input, automatically close tags, or somehow wrap the user input in an element to stop it leaking over?

You may try jquery-clean
$.htmlClean($myContent);

Is there a way to either validate the user's input, automatically close tags, or somehow wrap the user input in an element to stop it leaking over?
Yes: When the user is done editing the text area, you can parse what they've written using the browser, then get an HTML version of the parsed result from the browser:
var div = $("<div>");
div.html($("#the-textarea").val());
var html = div.html();
Live example — type an unclosed tag in and click the button:
$("input[type=button]").on("click", function() {
var div = $("<div>");
div.html($("#the-textarea").val());
var html = div.html();
$(document.body).append("<p>You wrote:</p><hr>" + html + "<hr>End of what you wrote.");
});
<p>Type something unclosed here:</p>
<textarea id="the-textarea" rows="5" cols="40"></textarea>
<br><input type="button" value="Click when ready">
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
Important Note: If you're going to store what they write and then display it to anyone else, there is no client-side solution, including the above, which is safe. Instead, you must use a server-side solution to "sanitize" the HTML you get from them, to remove (for instance) malicious content, etc. All the above does is help you get mostly-well-formed markup, not safe markup.
Even if you're just displaying it to them, it would still be best to sanitize it, since they can work around any client-side pre-processing you do.

You could try and use : http://ejohn.org/blog/pure-javascript-html-parser/ .
But if the user is entering the html by hand you could just check to have all tags closed properly. If not, just display an error message to the user.

You can create a jQuery element using the text and then get it's html, like so
Sample
<textarea>
<div>
<div>
<span>some content</span>
<span>some content
</div>
</textarea>
Script
alert($($('textarea').text()).html());
alert($($('textarea').text()).html());
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<textarea>
<div>
<div>
<span>some content</span>
<span>some content
</div>
</textarea>

The simple way to check if entered HTML is actually valid and parseable by browser is to let browser try it out itself using DOMParser. Then you could check if result is ok or not:
function checkHTML(html) {
var dom = new DOMParser().parseFromString(html, "text/xml");
return dom.documentElement.childNodes[0].nodeName !== 'parsererror';
}
$('button').click(function() {
var html = $('textarea').val();
var isValid = checkHTML(html);console.log(isValid)
$('div').html(isValid ? html : 'HTML is not valid!');
});
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<textarea cols="80" rows="7"><div>Some HTML</textarea> <button style="vertical-align:top">Check</button>
<div></div>

show html output in textarea instead of HTML code

If I have a textarea including some HTML code, how can I write a JavaScript function to show the HTML output instead of HTML code itself, for example:
<textarea id="mytextarea">
<table border=1><tr><td>cellone</td>td>celltwo</td></tr></table
</textarea>
<input type=button onclick="HTMLoutput();"/>
<script>
HTMLoutput()
{
//Code to show html output instead of html code in textarea
}
</script>
How can I do this? What is the suggested code to write inside the HTMLoutput()?

So to convert the the html code to a formated html you need to do:
$('resultDiv').append($('<div/>').html($('.txtArea').val()+"<br>");
here's an example that use div with contentEditable set to true.

It sounds like you're asking how to take some HTML and display its rendered result in your document.
That's exactly what the innerHTML property does.
Simply pick a DOM element to display the result in, and set its innerHTML to the HTML to display.

EpicEditor text showing as instead of space

Not sure if this is an actual problem per se but I'm using Epic Editor to input and save markdown in my GAE application (webpy with mako as the templating engine).
I've got a hidden input element in the form which gets populated by the EpicEditor's content when I submit the form but all the white spaces are replaced by . Is this an intended feature? If I check the same code on the EpicEditor site, it clearly returns spaces instead of so what's different about mine?
<form>
<!-- form elements -->
<input id="content" name="content" type="hidden" value></input>
<div id="epiceditor"></div>
<button type="submit" name="submit" id="submit">submit</button>
</form>
<script type="text/javascript">
$('button#submit').click(function(){
var content = editor.getElement('editor').body.innerHTML; //all the spaces are returned as and breaks are <br>
$('input#content').html(content);
});
</script>
NOTE: I want to save my content as markdown in a TextProperty field my data store and generate the html tags when I retrieve it using marked.js

I'm the creator of EpicEditor. You shouldn't be getting the innerHTML. EpicEditor does nothing to the innerHTML as you write. The text and code you are seeing will be different between all the browsers and it's how contenteditable fields work. For example, some browsers insert UTF-8 characters for spaces some &nbsp.
EpicEditor gives you methods to normalize the text tho. You shouldn't ever be trying to parse the text manually.
$('button#submit').click(function(){
var content = editor.exportFile();
$('input#content').html(content);
});
More details on exportFile: http://epiceditor.com/#exportfilefilenametype
P.S. You don't need to do input#content. Thats the same as just #content :)

You can do this if you dont find out why:
<script type="text/javascript">
$('button#submit').click(function(){
var content = editor.getElement('editor').body.innerHTML;
content = content.replace(" ", " ");
$('input#content').html(content);
});
</script>

[EDIT: solved]
I shouldn't be using innerHTML, but innerText instead.
I figured out that Epic Editor uses on all spaces proceeding the first one. This is a feature, presumably.
However that wasn't the problem. ALL the spaces were being converted to , eventually, I realised it occurs when Epic Editor loads the autosaved content from localStorage.
I'm now loading content from my backend every time instead of autosaving. Not optimal, but solves it.

Javascript form innerHTML

i have an issue with innerHTML and getElementsById(); method but I am not sure if these two methods are the root of the issues i have.
here goes my code :
<script type="text/javascript">
function clearTextField(){
document.getElementsById("commentText").value = "";
};
function sendComment(){
var commentaire = document.getElementById("commentText").value;
var htmlPresent = document.getElementById("posted");
htmlPresent.innerHTML = commentaire;
clearTextField();
};
</script>
and my HTML code goes like this:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p id="posted">
Text to replaced when user click Send a comment button
</p>
<form>
<textarea id="commentText" type="text" name="comment" rows="10" cols="40"></textarea>
<button id="send" onclick="sendComment()">Send a comment</button>
</form>
</body>
</html>
So theorically, this code would get the user input from the textarea and replace the text in between the <p> markups. It actually works for half a second : I see the text rapidly change to what user have put in the textarea, the text between the <p> markup is replaced by user input from <textarea> and it goes immediately back to the original text.
Afterward, when I check the source code, html code hasn't changed one bit, given the html should have been replaced by whatever user input from the textarea.
I have tried three different broswer, I also have tried with getElementByTagName(); method without success.
Do I miss something ? My code seems legit and clean, but something is escaping my grasp.
What I wanted out of this code is to replace HTML code between a given markup (like <p>) by the user input in the textarea, but it only replace it for a few milliseconds and return to original html.
Any help would be appreciated.
EDIT : I want to add text to the html page. changing the text visible on the page. not necessarily in the source. . .

There is no document.getElementsById, however there is a document.getElementById. This is probably the source of your problem.

I don't think there is any document.getElementsById function. It should be document.getElementById.

"To set or get the text value of input or textarea elements, use the .val() method."
Check out the jquery site... http://api.jquery.com/val/