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Java

Posted by Ricardo Sala
Ricardo Sala
16,212 Points

My blog is posting "asdfas <br> df <br> asd" !!! How do I get new lines??

Hi!

I am doing a blog in Spark, and it is showing:

"asdfas <br> df <br> asd"

instead of:

"asdfas df asd"

how could I fix it? :) thanks!!!

Here is the code:

post("/new", (request, response) -> {
            String title = request.queryParams("title");
            String text = request.queryParams("entry").replace("\n", "<br>");
            Entry entry = new Entry(title, Calendar.getInstance().getTime(), text, new ArrayList<>());
            blog.add(entry);
            response.redirect("/entries/" + entry.getSlug());
            return null;
        });

1 Answer

J.D. Sandifer
J.D. Sandifer
18,813 Points
J.D. Sandifer
J.D. Sandifer
18,813 Points

I don't know Spark so I can't answer specifically, but I am familiar with publishing text on web pages and how most methods designed to do that typically sanitize text to prevent Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Here are some recommendations:

  • One of your methods - probably the Entry constructor or blog.add() - are sanitizing the text and turning <br> into &lt;br&gt; behind the scenes so it displays as <br> on the page. You'll have to read their documentation to understand where it's happening and how to work around it - possibly escaping the <br> sequence somehow or deactivating the sanitization.

  • However, if request.queryParams("entry") is retrieving text from some kind of user input, you'll want to be careful that you're not introducing an XSS vulnerability. Sanitize the original text yourself using a method for that purpose and then add your line breaks after that.

  • You might also have to separate the text into sections using the newline characters and add each section separately to your post.

Good luck!