Peter Hoffmann

CoffeeScript String Interpolation with HTML Escaping

Peter Hoffmann
Peter Hoffmann
· coffeescript

CoffeeScript string interpolation, and how to combine it with HTML escaping.

This post is from 2012. Some of the content may be outdated.

Coffeescript supports ruby-style string interpolation inside double quotes.

author = "Wittgenstein"
quote  = "A picture is a fact. -- #{ author }"

# A picture is a fact. -- Wittgenstein

As the string interpolation is not limited to simple variable substitution, it's easy to define an escaping function and use it inside the string interpolation

escape = (s) -> (''+s).replace(/&/g, '&amp;').replace(/</g, '&lt;')
        .replace(/>/g, '&gt;').replace(/"/g, '&quot;')
        .replace(/'/g, '&#x27;').replace(/\//g,'&#x2F;')

author = '<blink>Wittgenstein</blink>'
quote  = "A picture is a fact. -- #{ escape author }"

#A picture is a fact. -- &lt;blink&gt;Wittgenstein&lt;&#x2F;blink&gt;