How can I show HTML snippets on a webpage without needing to replace each < with < and > with >?
In other words, is there a tag for don't render HTML until you hit the closing tag?
The tried and true method for HTML:
Replace the & character with &
Replace the < character with <
Replace the > character with >
Optionally surround your HTML sample with <pre> and/or <code> tags.
sample 1:
<pre>
This text has
been formatted using
the HTML pre tag. The brower should
display all white space
as it was entered.
</pre>
sample 2:
<pre>
<code>
My pre-formatted code
here.
</code>
</pre>
sample 3:
(If you are actually "quoting" a block of code, then the markup would be)
<blockquote>
<pre>
<code>
My pre-formatted "quoted" code here.
</code>
</pre>
</blockquote>
is there a tag for don't render HTML until you hit the closing tag?
No, there is not. In HTML proper, there’s no way short of escaping some characters:
& as &
< as <
(Incidentally, there is no need to escape > but people often do it for reasons of symmetry.)
And of course you should surround the resulting, escaped HTML code within <pre><code>…</code></pre> to (a) preserve whitespace and line breaks, and (b) mark it up as a code element.
All other solutions, such as wrapping your code into a <textarea> or the (deprecated) <xmp> element, will break.1
XHTML that is declared to the browser as XML (via the HTTP Content-Type header! — merely setting a DOCTYPE is not enough) could alternatively use a CDATA section:
<![CDATA[Your <code> here]]>
But this only works in XML, not in HTML, and even this isn’t a foolproof solution, since the code mustn’t contain the closing delimiter ]]>. So even in XML the simplest, most robust solution is via escaping.
1 Case in point:
textarea {border: none; width: 100%;}
<textarea readonly="readonly">
<p>Computer <textarea>says</textarea> <span>no.</span>
</textarea>
<xmp>
Computer <xmp>says</xmp> <span>no.</span>
</xmp>
Kind of a naive method to display code will be including it in a textarea and add disabled attribute so its not editable.
<textarea disabled> code </textarea>
Hope that help someone looking for an easy way to get stuff done.
But warning, this won't escape the tags for you, as you can see here (the following obviously does not work):
<textarea disabled>
This is the code to create a textarea:
<textarea></textarea>
</textarea>
Deprecated, but works in FF3 and IE8.
<xmp>
<b>bold</b><ul><li>list item</li></ul>
</xmp>
Recommended:
<pre><code>
code here, escape it yourself.
</code></pre>
i used <xmp> just like this :
http://jsfiddle.net/barnameha/hF985/1/
The deprecated <xmp> tag essentially does that but is no longer part of the XHTML spec. It should still work though in all current browsers.
Here's another idea, a hack/parlor trick, you could put the code in a textarea like so:
<textarea disabled="true" style="border: none;background-color:white;">
<p>test</p>
</textarea>
Putting angle brackets and code like this inside a text area is invalid HTML and will cause undefined behavior in different browsers. In Internet Explorer the HTML is interpreted, whereas Mozilla, Chrome and Safari leave it uninterpreted.
If you want it to be non-editable and look different then you could easily style it using CSS. The only issue would be that browsers will add that little drag handle in the bottom-right corner to resize the box. Or alternatively, try using an input tag instead.
The right way to inject code into your textarea is to use server side language like this PHP for example:
<textarea disabled="true" style="border: none;background-color:white;">
<?php echo '<p>test</p>'; ?>
</textarea>
Then it bypasses the html interpreter and puts uninterpreted text into the textarea consistently across all browsers.
Other than that, the only way is really to escape the code yourself if static HTML or using server-side methods such as .NET's HtmlEncode() if using such technology.
If your goal is to show a chunk of code that you're executing elsewhere on the same page, you can use textContent (it's pure-js and well supported: http://caniuse.com/#feat=textcontent)
<div id="myCode">
<p>
hello world
</p>
</div>
<div id="loadHere"></div>
document.getElementById("myCode").textContent = document.getElementById("loadHere").innerHTML;
To get multi-line formatting in the result, you need to set css style "white-space: pre;" on the target div, and write the lines individually using "\r\n" at the end of each.
Here's a demo: https://jsfiddle.net/wphps3od/
This method has an advantage over using textarea: Code wont be reformatted as it would in a textarea. (Things like are removed entirely in a textarea)
In HTML? No.
In XML/XHTML? You could use a CDATA block.
I assume:
you want to write 100% valid HTML5
you want to place the code snippet (almost) literal in the HTML
especially < should not need escaping
All your options are in this tree:
with HTML syntax
there are five kinds of elements
those called "normal elements" (like <p>)
can't have a literal <
it would be considered the start of the next tag or comment
void elements
they have no content
you could put your HTML in a data attribute (but this is true for all elements)
that would need JavaScript to move the data elsewhere
in double-quoted attributes, " and &thing; need escaping: " and &thing; respectively
raw text elements
<script> and <style> only
they are never rendered visible
but embedding your text in Javascript might be feasable
Javascript allows for multi-line strings with backticks
it could then be inserted dynamically
a literal </script is not allowed anywhere in <script>
escapable raw text elements
<textarea> and <title> only
<textarea> is a good candidate to wrap code in
it is totally legal to write </html> in there
not legal is the substring </textarea for obvious reasons
escape this special case with </textarea or similar
&thing; needs escaping: &thing;
foreign elements
elements from MathML and SVG namespaces
at least SVG allows embedding of HTML again...
and CDATA is allowed there, so it seems to have potential
with XML syntax
covered by Konrad's answer
Note: > never needs escaping. Not even in normal elements.
It's vey simple ....
Use this xmp code
<xmp id="container">
<xmp >
<p>a paragraph</p>
</xmp >
</xmp>
<textarea ><?php echo htmlentities($page_html); ?></textarea>
works fine for me..
"keeping in mind Alexander's suggestion, here is why I think this is a good approach"
if we just try plain <textarea> it may not always work since there may be closing textarea tags which may wrongly close the parent tag and display rest of the HTML source on the parent document, which would look awkward.
using htmlentities converts all applicable characters such as < > to HTML entities which eliminates any possibility of leaks.
There maybe benefits or shortcomings to this approach or a better way of achieving the same results, if so please comment as I would love to learn from them :)
This is a simple trick and I have tried it in Safari and Firefox
<code>
<span><</span>meta property="og:title" content="A very fine cuisine" /><br>
<span><</span>meta property="og:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.png" />
</code>
It will show like this:
You can see it live Here
You could try:
Hello! Here is some code:
<xmp>
<div id="hello">
</div>
</xmp>
This is a bit of a hack, but we can use something like:
body script {
display: block;
font-family: monospace;
white-space: pre;
}
<script type="text/html">
<h1>Hello World</h1>
<ul>
<li>Enjoy this dodgy hack,
<li>or don't!
</ul>
</script>
With that CSS, the browser will display scripts inside the body. It won’t attempt to execute this script, as it has an unknown type text/html. It’s not necessary to escape special characters inside a <script>, unless you want to include a closing </script> tag.
I’m using something like this to display executable JavaScript in the body of the page, for a sort of "literate progamming".
There’s some more info in this question When should tags be visible and why can they?.
function escapeHTML(string)
{
var pre = document.createElement('pre');
var text = document.createTextNode(string);
pre.appendChild(text);
return pre.innerHTML;
}//end escapeHTML
it will return the escaped Html
Ultimately the best (though annoying) answer is "escape the text".
There are however a lot of text editors -- or even stand-alone mini utilities -- that can do this automatically. So you never should have to escape it manually if you don't want to (Unless it's a mix of escaped and un-escaped code...)
Quick Google search shows me this one, for example: http://malektips.com/zzee-text-utility-html-escape-regular-expression.html
This is by far the best method for most situations:
<pre><code>
code here, escape it yourself.
</code></pre>
I would have up voted the first person who suggested it but I don't have reputation. I felt compelled to say something though for the sake of people trying to find answers on the Internet.
You could use a server side language like PHP to insert raw text:
<?php
$str = <<<EOD
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="description" content="Minimal HTML5">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML5,Minimal">
<title>This is the title</title>
<link rel='stylesheet.css' href='style.css'>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
EOD;
?>
then dump out the value of $str htmlencoded:
<div style="white-space: pre">
<?php echo htmlentities($str); ?>
</div>
There are a few ways to escape everything in HTML, none of them nice.
Or you could put in an iframe that loads a plain old text file.
Actually there is a way to do this. It has limitation (one), but is 100% standard, not deprecated (like xmp), and works.
And it's trivial. Here it is:
<div id="mydoc-src" style="display: none;">
LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo
<!--
YOUR CODE HERE.
<script src="WidgetsLib/all.js"></script>
^^ This is a text, no side effects trying to load it.
-->
LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo
</div>
Please let me explain. First of all, ordinary HTML comment does the job, to prevent whole block be interpreted. You can easily add in it any tags, all of them will be ignored. Ignored from interpretation, but still available via innerHTML! So what is left, is to get the contents, and filter the preceding and trailing comment tokens.
Except (remember - the limitation) you can't put there HTML comments inside, since (at least in my Chrome) nesting of them is not supported, and very first '-->' will end the show.
Well, it is a nasty little limitation, but in certain cases it's not a problem at all, if your text is free of HTML comments. And, it's easier to escape one construct, then a whole bunch of them.
Now, what is that weird LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo string? It's a random string, like a hash, unlikely to be used in the block, and used for? Here's the context, why I have used it. In my case, I took the contents of one DIV, then processed it with Showdown markdown, and then the output assigned into another div. The idea was, to write markdown inline in the HTML file, and just open in a browser and it would transform on the load on-the-fly. So, in my case, <!-- became transformed to <p><!--</p>, the comment properly escaped. It worked, but polluted the screen. So, to easily remove it with regex, the random string was used. Here's the code:
var converter = new showdown.Converter();
converter.setOption('simplifiedAutoLink', true);
converter.setOption('tables', true);
converter.setOption('tasklists', true);
var src = document.getElementById("mydoc-src");
var res = document.getElementById("mydoc-res");
res.innerHTML = converter.makeHtml(src.innerHTML)
.replace(/<p>.{0,10}LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo.{0,10}<\/p>/g, "");
src.innerHTML = '';
And it works.
If somebody is interested, this article is written using this technique. Feel free to download, and look inside the HTML file.
It depends what you are using it for. Is it user input? Then use <textarea>, and escape everything. In my case, and probably it's your case too, I simply used comments, and it does the job.
If you don't use markdown, and just want to get it as is from a tag, then it's even simpler:
<div id="mydoc-src" style="display: none;">
<!--
YOUR CODE HERE.
<script src="WidgetsLib/all.js"></script>
^^ This is a text, no side effects trying to load it.
-->
</div>
and JavaScript code to get it:
var src = document.getElementById("mydoc-src");
var YOUR_CODE = src.innerHTML.replace(/(<!--|-->)/g, "");
This is how I did it:
$str = file_get_contents("my-code-file.php");
echo "<textarea disabled='true' style='border: none;background-color:white;'>";
echo $str;
echo "</textarea>";
It may not work in every situation, but placing code snippets inside of a textarea will display them as code.
You can style the textarea with CSS if you don't want it to look like an actual textarea.
If you are looking for a solution that works with frameworks.
const code = `
<div>
this will work in react
<div>
`
<pre>
<code>{code}</code>
</pre>
And you can give it a nice look with css:
pre code {
background-color: #eee;
border: 1px solid #999;
display: block;
padding: 20px;
}
JavaScript string literals can be used to write the HTML across multiple lines. Obviously, JavaScript, ECMA6 in particular, is required for this solution.
.createTextNode paired with CSS white-space: pre-wrap; does the trick.
.innerText alone also works. Run code snippet below.
let codeBlock = `
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to my page</h1>
<p>I like cars and lorries and have a big Jeep!</p>
<h2>Where I live</h2>
<p>I live in a small hut on a mountain!</p>
</body>
</html>
`
const codeElement = document.querySelector("#a");
let textNode = document.createTextNode(codeBlock);
codeElement.appendChild(textNode);
const divElement = document.querySelector("#b");
divElement.innerText = codeBlock;
#a {
white-space: pre-wrap;
}
<div id=a>
</div>
<div id=b>
</div>
//To show xml tags in table columns you will have to encode the tags first
function htmlEncode(value) {
//create a in-memory div, set it's inner text(which jQuery automatically encodes)
//then grab the encoded contents back out. The div never exists on the page.
return $('<div/>').text(value).html();
}
html = htmlEncode(html)
A combination of a couple answers that work together here:
function c(s) {
return s.split("<").join("<").split(">").join(">").split("&").join("&")
}
displayMe.innerHTML = ok.innerHTML;
console.log(
c(ok.innerHTML)
)
<textarea style="display:none" id="ok">
<script>
console.log("hello", 5&9);
</script>
</textarea>
<div id="displayMe">
</div>
I used this a long time ago and it did the trick for me, I hope it helps you too.
var preTag = document.querySelectorAll('pre');
console.log(preTag.innerHTML);
for (var i = 0; i < preTag.length; i++) {
var pattern = preTag[i].innerHTML;
pattern = pattern.replace(/</g, "<").replace(/>/g, ">");
console.log(pattern);
preTag[i].innerHTML = pattern;
}
<pre>
<p>example</p>
<span>more text</span>
</pre>
You can separate the tags by changing them to spans.
Like this:
<span><</span> <!-- opening bracket of h1 here -->
<span>h1></span> <!-- opening tag of h1 completed here -->
<span>hello</span> <!-- text to print -->
<span><</span> <!-- closing h1 tag's bracket here -->
<span>/h1></span> <!-- closing h1 tag ends here -->
And also, you can just only add the <(opening angle bracket) to the spans
<span><</span> <!-- opening bracket of h1 here -->
h1> <!-- opening tag of h1 completed here -->
hello <!-- text to print -->
<span><</span> <!-- closing h1 tag's bracket here -->
/h1><!-- closing h1 tag ends here -->
<code><?php $str='<';echo htmlentities($str);?></code>
I found this to be the easiest, fastest and most compact.
For example I have:
<div id="f" style="width:50px; height:50px; background-color:#ddd">
<p>Some text</p>
</div>
I want to get <div id="f" style="width:50px; height:50px; background-color:#ddd">
This is what I have tried so far:
alert(document.getElementById("f").innerHTML);
alert(document.getElementById("f").outerHTML);
and jsfiddle of it.
There is no direct way to do this. However, you could remove the innerHTML content from the outerHTML content.
document.getElementById("f").outerHTML.replace(document.getElementById("f").innerHTML,'')
The closest I can think of is to clone it, remove all contents, get outerHTML, and then remove the </div> from the end.
var clone = document.getElementById("f").cloneNode(true);
clone.innerHTML = "";
var html = clone.outerHTML.replace(/<\/div>\s*$/, '');
You almost have the solution, using outerHTML. You just want to split the returned string after the first > character, which is easy using JS .split().
For example:
var html = document.getElementById("f").outerHTML;
var part = html.split(">")[0] + ">";
So: I get the whole HTML, split it by the > character, then add the > back in (because split() removes it).
Here's an updated fiddle of it.
Is there a way to store a HTML snippet in a variable using Javascript or jQuery like this? (obviously it's a non-working an example)
var mysnippet = << EOF
<div class="myclass">
<div class="anotherclass">
Some dummy text
</div>
</div>
EOF
And then insert it in the document using jQuery:
mysnippet.append($('#someelement'));
EDIT:
Please, read this before answering of commenting: What I have is a raw HTML snippet inside my JS file, and I need to store it in a Javascript variable using something like that EOF construction. I need to avoid putting it between quotation marks.
If it's not possible using Javascript and/or jQuery, then the question has no solution.
Just get the HTML code of the div you want by var content = $('#somediv').html(); and then append it to some div later on ! $('#otherdiv').append(content);
$().html(); delivers the HTML Content of that div. documentation: http://api.jquery.com/html/
$().append(<content>); appends the Content to a special div. documentatoin: http://api.jquery.com/append/
You could use javascript templates like ejs and haml-coffee.
You could write:
var mysnippet = "<div class='myclass'>"+
"<div class='anotherclass'>"+
"Some dummy text"+
"</div>"+
"</div>";
and then insert is using the append function (which takes the snippet as argument).
Yes. Fiddle example
JavaScript
var html = '<b>Bold</b>'
$('.anotherclass').append(html);
HTML
<div class="myclass">
<div class="anotherclass">
Some dummy text
</div>
</div>
Unfortunately nothing like << EOF is available. Here's one solution:
$el = $('<div />')
.addClass('myClass')
.append(
$('<div />')
.addClass('anotherclass')
.text('Foo Bar')
);
Thinking on the same issue I have found this discussion. What I have in mind is to put a hidden textarea, containing the html, and then retrieving the html from there.
Thus there will be no conflicts with doubled DOM ids, since textarea content isn't rendered as html.
For those who come across this as I have...
You may wish to use the new
<template>
tag in HTML5.
It still doesn't store the HTML in the JavaScript unfortunately :(
I'm hoping that this isn't too subjective. I feel there is a definitive answer so here goes.
I want to create this html on the fly using JS (no libraries):
Play
Mute
<div id="progressBarOuter">
<div id="bytesLoaded"></div>
<div id="progressBar"></div>
</div>
<div id="currentTime">0:00</div>
<div id="totalTime">0:00</div>
using javascript. I know I can do this using createElement etc but it seems extremely long winded to do this for each element. Can anyone suggest a way to do this with more brevity.
I do not have access to a library in this project....so no jquery etc.
Keep your markup separate from your code:
You can embed the HTML snippets that you'll be using as hidden templates inside your HTML page and clone them on demand:
<style type="text/css">
#templates { display: none }
</style>
...
<script type="text/javascript">
var node = document.getElementById("tmp_audio").cloneNode(true);
node.id = ""; // Don't forget :)
// modify node contents with DOM manipulation
container.appendChild(node);
</script>
...
<div id="templates">
<div id="tmp_audio">
Play
Mute
<div class="progressBarOuter">
<div class="bytesLoaded"></div>
<div class="progressBar"></div>
</div>
<div class="currentTime">0:00</div>
<div class="totalTime">0:00</div>
</div>
</div>
Update: Note that I've converted the id attributes in the template to class attributes. This is to avoid having multiple elements on your page with the same ids. You probably don't even need the classes. You can access elements with:
node.getElementsByTagName("div")[4].innerHTML =
format(data.currentTime);
Alternatively, you can act on the HTML of the template:
<script type="text/javascript">
var tmp = document.getElementById("tmp_audio").innerHTML;
// modify template HTML with token replacement
container.innerHTML += tmp;
</script>
Shove the entire thing into a JS variable:
var html = 'Play';
html += 'Mute';
html += '<div id="progressBarOuter"><div id="bytesLoaded"></div><div id="progressBar"></div></div>';
html += '<div id="currentTime">0:00</div>';
html += '<div id="totalTime">0:00</div>';
Then:
document.getElementById("parentElement").innerHTML = html;
if you want theN:
document.getElementById("totalTime").innerHTML = "5:00";
You can use
<script type="text/javascript">
function appendHTML() {
var wrapper = document.createElement("div");
wrapper.innerHTML = '\
Play\
Mute\
<div id="progressBarOuter"> \
<div id="bytesLoaded"></div>\
<div id="progressBar"></div>\
</div>\
<div id="currentTime">0:00</div>\
<div id="totalTime">0:00</div>\
';
document.body.appendChild(wrapper);
}
</script>
If you live in 2019 and beyond read here.
With JavaScript es6 you can use string literals to create templates.
create a function that returns a string/template literal
function videoPlayerTemplate(data) {
return `
<h1>${data.header}</h1>
<p>${data.subheader}</p>
Play
Mute
<div id="progressBarOuter">
<div id="bytesLoaded"></div>
<div id="progressBar"></div>
</div>
<time id="currentTime">0:00</time>
<time id="totalTime">0:00</time>
`
}
Create a JSON object containing the data you want to display
var data = {
header: 'My video player',
subheader: 'Version 2 coming soon'
}
add that to whatever element you like
const videoplayer = videoPlayerTemplate(data);
document.getElementById('myRandomElement').insertAdjacentHTML("afterbegin", videoplayer);
You can read more about string literals here
edit: HTML import is now deprecated.
Now with Web Components you can inject HTML using an HTML import.
The syntax looks like this:
<link rel="import" href="component.html" >
This will just load the content of the html file in the href attribute inline in the order it appears. You can any valid html in the loaded file, so you can even load other scripts if you want.
To inject that from JavaScript you could do something of the likes of:
var importTag = document.createElement('link');
importTag.setAttribute('rel', 'import');
importTag.setAttribute('href', 'component.html');
document.body.appendChild(importTag);
At the time I am writing this, Chrome and Opera support HTML imports. You can see an up to date compatibility table here http://caniuse.com/#feat=imports
But don't worry about browsers not supporting it, you can use it in them anyway with the webcomponentsjs polyfill.
For more info about HTML imports check http://webcomponents.org/articles/introduction-to-html-imports/
If you don't need any validation for your syntax (which is what makes createElement() so nice) then you could always default to simply setting the innerHTML property of the element you want to insert your markup inside of.
Personally, I would stick with using createElement(). It is more verbose but there are far less things to worry about that way.
If performance is a concern, stay away from innerHTML. You should create the whole object tree using document.createElement() as many times as needed, including for nested elements.
Finally, append it to the document with one statement, not many statements.
In my informal testing over the years, this will give you the best performance (some browsers may differ).
If HTML is ever declared in a variable, it should be simple and for a very specific purpose. Usually, this is not the right approach.
here's 2 possible cases :
Your HTML is static
Your HTML is dynamic
solution 1
In this case, wrap your HTML in double quotes, make it a string and save it in a variable. then push it inside HTML, here's a demo 👇
HTML
<div id="test"></div>
JavaScript
let selector = document.querySelector("#test");
let demo_1 = "<div id='child'> hello and welcome</div>"
selector.innerHTML = demo_1;
solution 2
In this case, wrap your HTML in back ticks, make it a template literal and save it in a variable. then push it inside HTML,
here, you can use variables to change your content. here's a demo 👇
HTML
<div id="test"></div>
JavaScript
let selector = document.querySelector("#test");
let changes = 'hello and welcome'
let demo_1 = `<div id='child'>${changes}</div>`
selector.innerHTML = demo_1;
You can concatenate raw HTML strings (being careful to escape text and prevent XSS holes), or you can rewrite jQuery (or something similar)
I have a situation where I pass text into a third party library, but if my model isPrivate, I'd like to add an element to the text.
return { id: item.id, text: (item.isPrivate == true) ? "<i class=\"icon-lock\" title=\"Private group.\"></i> " + item.label : item.label };
This creates issues with the way the third party library builds up its markup.
This is never a good idea, but third party libraries are there so that we don't have to write everything ourselves. In a situation like this, you have to rely on passing markup though javascript.
When i find a proper solution to this, I will give you an update