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Using JS Remoting I want to generate HTML content in the backend and then display it in the VF page.

I am building the string in the controller as per follows:

String account = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account LIMIT 1];
String htmlContent = 'This is the string built in APEX <a href="' + account.Id + '" target="_blank">Click here if you want to visit ' + account.Name + '</a>. This is an example';

Now, when I debug the string in Firebug onto the page, it comes encoded as per follows:

This is the string built in APEX &lt;a href=&quot' + account.Id + '&quot target=&quot_blank&quot&gt;Click here if you want to visit ' + account.Name + '&lt;/a&gt;. This is an example

Which is fine and I understand Salesforce does it for security reasons.

Before I jumped into the proper solution, which is passing the ID and the NAME only, and then build the string in JS, I though I'd give it a go with replacing the encoded string with JS functions. And I did so:

function getString(param1)
{
    ClassName.Method(param1, function(result, event) 
    {
        if(event.type === 'exception') 
        {
            return false;
        }
        else if(result)
        {
            console.log(result.message.replace(/&lt;/g, '<').replace(/&gt;/g, '>').replace(/&quot;/g, '"'));
        }
        else
        {
            // do something....
        }
    });
}

In the console I still get the same result, < and > are not replaced with < and > accordingly.

Then I ran the same code in pure HTML + JS, and it works.

Next thing I tried was logging indexOf('&lt;') and it returned -1. However, indexOf('lt;') and indexOf('&') both returned the correct position in the string.

Does anyone know WHY this doesn't work in VF?

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1  
Have you tried binding to apex:outputText with escape=false – techtrekker Jan 2 at 8:12
Not sure if binding will work for him since he is calling this method from a remote action. It's not a bound variable from a controller. – Kevin O'Hara Jan 2 at 19:32
The one thing that I know is that Visualforce isn't causing the issue here. If you are just using remote actions, then Visualforce has already done it's job and the only things in play are your browser and the server response to your remote action call. Based on what you have described, this should be working for you. Can you post your firebug output? Can you try looking at it in Chrome? – Kevin O'Hara Jan 2 at 19:42

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I honestly can't figure out why you aren't able to decode this on the client side based on what you have written, but one solution to fix this would be to specify the escape:false configuration in the remote action call. From the remote action docs:

  • configuration configures the handling of the remote call and response. Use this to specify whether or not to escape the Apex method’s response. The default value is {escape: true}.

Here is what this would look like:

Visualforce.remoting.Manager.invokeAction(
    '{!$RemoteAction.MyController.myMethod}', 
    param1, 
    function(result, event){
        // 
    }, 
    {escape: false} // <- THIS IS WHERE YOU SET THE CONFIGURATION
);
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That's the bugger, how could I miss it? :) Thanks @kevin – e-bacho 2.0 Jan 3 at 4:56
up vote 0 down vote

You are close. There are two main issues.

1) The html you will want to use returned from the remoting is result not result.message

2) You will need to decode the returned html.

Below is a working example.

Controller

public class StackExchangeController {

  @RemoteAction
  public static String getHtml() {
    Account account = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account LIMIT 1];
    return 'This is the string built in APEX <a href="' + account.Id + '" target="_blank">Click here if you want to visit ' + account.Name + '</a>. This is an example';        
  }

}

Page

<apex:page controller="StackExchangeController" sidebar="false" showHeader="false" standardStylesheets="false">
  <head>
    <script src="{!URLFOR($Resource.jquery, 'jquery/jquery-1.8.2.min.js')}" >
    </script>
    <script>
      $(document).ready(function() {
        StackExchangeController.getHtml(function(result, event) {
          //$('<div />').html(string).text() is a simple way of decoding html with jquery
          result = $('<div />').html(result).text();
          $('div#target').html(result);
        });      
      });
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="target"></div>
</body>

share|improve this answer
Forgot to mention that I'm using a wrapper class to return the result. result.message is the correct string. – e-bacho 2.0 Jan 3 at 4:52

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