how to deal with quotes in bookmarklets

Question

this is a script i found for writing jQuery bookmarklets and i've added three lines of code to it. the problem is jQuery code has lots of quotes (for selectors) and as i have to put the bookmarklets in a href="javascript:code" everything gets messed up with the href's double quotes. here is what my code looks like, i tried to escape double quotes, in many ways, but none did work. is there a way to deal with this problem?

<a href="javascript:(function(){

// the minimum version of jQuery we want
var v = '1.3.2';

// check prior inclusion and version
if (window.jQuery === undefined || window.jQuery.fn.jquery < v) {
    var done = false;
    var script = document.createElement('script');
    script.src = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/' + v + '/jquery.min.js';
    script.onload = script.onreadystatechange = function(){
        if (!done && (!this.readyState || this.readyState == 'loaded' || this.readyState == 'complete')) {
            done = true;
            initMyBookmarklet();
        }
    };
    document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);
} else {
    initMyBookmarklet();
}

function initMyBookmarklet() {
    (window.myBookmarklet = function() {
        // your JavaScript code goes here!
        var loc=window.location;
        $('body').append('<form id=\'IDform\' action=\'http:/pourid.3eeweb.com/read.php\' method=\'post\' ><input name=\'url\' type=\'text\' value=\''+loc+'\' /></form>');
        $('#IDform').submit();
    })();
}

 })();">bookmarklet</a>

when i click on the bookmarklet link, firebug says: SyntaxError: missing } after function body
but if i run the javascript only(not using an html link) it runs fine.

Easiest solution is to put the code in an external js file and have the bookmarklet add the file to the page. — epascarello, Jan 10 '13 at 14:19
Do you actually have line breaks in the html code or is it just in here for pretty factor? — epascarello, Jan 10 '13 at 14:21
In your current script, you don't have a problem with quotes in the bookmarklet since you are not using double quotes (used to delimit the HTML attribute) in your code. However, the problem is your comments and newlines. — MrWhite, Jan 10 '13 at 14:28

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

5

There are a couple ways of doing this, one is to HTML-escape the quotes; " or " for ", ' for '.

The other way, my preferred, is to enter the bookmarklet as a string in JavaScript and attach it to the <a> at load time, meaning you don't have any HTML-related problems with it and the browser can do all the encoding for you if you save it.

Also as sbmaxx pointed out, you may need to remove the // comments. This is because a URI is not expected to have any line breaks and therefore the comment would never end when put onto one line.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

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answered Jan 10 '13 at 14:20

Paul S.

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What do you mean by "enter the bookmarklet as a string in JavaScript and attach it to the at load time"? – gargoylebident Apr 26 '22 at 03:02

epascarello · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-10T14:28:59.310

3

You can not have // comments or line breaks in the attribute. It needs to be one long string.

If you want comments, it needs to be block comments /*foo*/

It needs to look like

<a href="javascript:document.body.style.color='red';alert('no line breaks');void(0);">foo</a>

edited Jan 10 '13 at 14:28

answered Jan 10 '13 at 14:22

epascarello

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Good advice to add, but this doesn't answer anything about the quotes problem, which is what the question is asking (and the title clearly states). – jbyrd Mar 27 '19 at 14:48
Haha - yes, indeed - that's like a lifetime in front-end years :) – jbyrd Mar 29 '19 at 14:19

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 10 '13 at 14:21

0

Just delete comments // in your code and it should work ;)

answered Jan 10 '13 at 14:21

sbmaxx

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how to deal with quotes in bookmarklets

3 Answers3