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In Bryce Berry's recent tip Creating hotspot buttons on the fly using DXL, there are some in-line comments/documentation that read as follows:
It's necessary to replace any ampersands in the Database Title with its' HTML equivalent as DXL can't convert special characters such as &, <, and >
< less than = <
> greater than = >
& ampersand = &
In fact, it's not that DXL can't convert these special characters, it's just that they ARE special characters. In XML, there are five predefined entity references used in place of specific characters that would otherwise be interpreted as part of the XML itself. These five characters and their entity references are as follows:
- Ampersand {&} = &
- Less than {<} = <
- Greater than {>} = >
- Double quotes {"} = "
- Apostrophe {'} = '
So, text can be safely converted to
well-formed XML. Example
(the code below is a private method
in a class):
Private Function convertEntityRef
(pstrValu As String) As Boolean
On Error Goto errorThrower
Const AMPERSAND = "&"
Const APOSTROPHE = "'"
Const DBL_QUOTES = """
Const GT = ">"
Const LT = "<"
convertEntityRef = False
pstrValu$ = Replace(pstrValu$,
{&}, AMPERSAND)
pstrValu$ = Replace(pstrValu$,
{'}, APOSTROPHE)
pstrValu$ = Replace(pstrValu$,
{<}, LT)
pstrValu$ = Replace(pstrValu$,
{>}, GT)
pstrValu$ = Replace(pstrValu$,
{"}, DBL_QUOTES)
convertEntityRef = True
Exit Function
errorThrower:
Call Me.buildStackTrace(Erl,
Getthreadinfo(1))
Error Err, Error$
End Function
MEMBER FEEDBACK TO THIS TIP
This is a good tip. But, what I especially liked is the error handling. Dallas uses a technique that is both simple and powerful -- the best kind of technique.
Powerful: By passing the error up the call stack, he is building a Java-like stack trace, capturing in order each subroutine/function/method/property that is involved and the offending a line number in each of those procedures.
Simple: The code is the same in every procedure's error handler. Only the main subroutine needs to report the error text.
—Grant L.
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