AJAX response - escaped html

[matthisco]

Hi Folks,

I'm using BBC's glow to make an ajax post to a coldfusion page.

It works fine apart from displaying the results in a div with all the html escaped.

Does anyone know how I can display the results as html?

Is there a coldfusion tag/ function that turns special chars into html?

Many thanks

<div id="alert">

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5">
  <tr>
    <td>Name</td>
    <td>Lead</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>ABDUL KADIR</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Abigail Clinton</td>

    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Adrienne Parker</td>
    <td></td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Aileen Makohon</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Aimee Garbett</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Alison Boughey</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Alison Durman</td>

    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Alison Hodgson</td>
    <td></td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amy Harrison</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Clare Neill</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Lynne Thompson</td>

    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Clare Neill</td>
    <td>1</td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>

    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>

    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Matthew Harris</td>
    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Matthew Harris</td>

    <td>1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>

  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Amy Harrison</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>

    <td>Amanda Harris</td>
    <td>0</td>
  </tr>
&lt;/table&gt; </div>

[Fernis · Accepted solution]

Without drilling down to the problem - why the characters show up in escaped format, I'll just answer the one question:

No, there is not a function in ColdFusion which unescapes escaped HTML strings. Neither has anyone published such function on cflib.org.

But unescaping is easy with ReplaceList() function. Just have the most typical/probably escaped and unescaped strings in the argument lists, and you'll have yourself a function.

Something like this:

<cfscript>

public function HtmlUnescape(htmlstring)

{

     return replaceList(arguments.htmlstring,"&gt;,&lt;",">,<");

     //add any other probable special characters and their encodings also to the list

}

</cfscript>

<cfsavecontent variable="test">

&lt;table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5"&gt;

</cfsavecontent>

<cfoutput>

original: #htmlcodeformat(test)#

<br>

unescaped: #htmlcodeformat(HtmlUnescape(test))#

</cfoutput>

-Fernis

[matthisco]

Thanks very much for your reply