[thelist] Escape of the Commas!

Tue Jun 25 15:21:00 CDT 2002

If you want, you can use JavaScript to do some escaping or replacing of
commas in the values before the form is submitted.  Or, you can handle it
server-side, like this (watch for line-wrap):

<HTML>
<HEAD>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<form name="frmMyForm" method="POST">
<input type="checkbox" name="myCheckbox" value="1,2,3"
	checked="true" /> myCheckbox (1)<br />
<input type="checkbox" name="myCheckbox" value="3,4,5"
	checked="true" /> myCheckbox (2)<br />
<input type="checkbox" name="myCheckbox" value="7,8,9"
	checked="true" /> myCheckbox (3)<br />
<%

Dim i, oDictionary, arrMyArray

If Request.Form("myCheckbox").Count > 1 Then
	Set oDictionary = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
	For i = 1 To Request.Form("myCheckbox").Count
		If Not oDictionary.Exists(i) Then
			oDictionary.Add i, Request.Form("myCheckbox")(i)
		End If
	Next
	arrMyArray = oDictionary.Items()
	Set oDictionary = Nothing
Else
	arrMyArray = Array(Request.Form("myCheckbox"))
End If

For i = LBound(arrMyArray) To UBound(arrMyArray)
	Response.Write("<p>Posted value of arrMyArray(" & i & ") = ")
	Response.Write(arrMyArray(i) & "</p>")
Next

%>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="btnSubmit" />
</form>
</BODY>
</HTML>

I know there's some overhead, with the creation of the dictionary object,
and looping through twice, but it keeps you from relying on JavaScript,
which can be a plus.  Also, this will work whether there's only one form
element called "myCheckbox" or twenty.

HTH,
Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Kogler [mailto:ken.kogler at cph.org]
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 1:51 PM
To: thelist
Subject: [thelist] Escape of the Commas!

Sounds like a cheesy B-movie title, but it pertains to my question:

I've got multiple form elements (checkboxes, in this case) with the same
name. Sometimes, their values contain commas. I'd like to escape or replace
these commas somehow, but I can't find an equivalent. (double quotes are
&quot;, left angle brackets are &lt;, etc, but what are commas? Is there
even a character entity for a comma?)

If I do request.form("myCheckbox"), I get back a comma-delineated list of
all the values (e.g. "value1, value2, value3"). I want to split this into an
array based on those commas, but if one of the values was "val,ue4", this
would wreck what I'm doing... see my problem?

Anyone know how to escape those pesky comma values?

-Ken

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