Question

I have the following code in my controller:

    public ActionResult MyPage()
    {
      var vm = new MyViewModel();
      vm.StringList = "'" + String.Join("','", MyModel.GetList().Select(r => r.Name).ToArray()) + "'";

        return View(vm);
    }

and in my asp.net-mvc view i have the following code:

 var myJavascriptArray = [<%=Model.StringList %>];

inside a javascript function

this works fine until one of the names in the:

 MyModel.GetList()

call has a apostrophe in it like “Bill O’Brien”

as that messes up my javascript code as it thinks the ‘ after the O is the end of that entry and the line breaks.

What is the best way to escape out of this character so i can have an array in javascript like that will ultimately show up as this:

var myJavascriptArray = [”Item 1′,Item 2′,’Item 3′,’Item 4′];

and deal with ‘Bill O’Brien’ being one of the entries.

Answer 1

Are you trying to do some sort of JSON serialization with all those manual apostrophes and stuff? Don’t.

Simply define a view model that will contain a list of names:

public class MyViewModel
{
    public string[] Names { get; set; }
} 

that you will populate in your controller and pass to the view:

public ActionResult MyPage()
{
    var model = new MyViewModel
    {
        Names = MyModel.GetList().Select(r => r.Name).ToArray()
    }
    return View(model);
}

and in the view JSON serialize this property:

var myJavascriptArray = <%= new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(Model.Names) %>;

Or if you are using ASP.NET MVC 3:

var myJavascriptArray = <%= Json.Encode(Model.Names) %>;

which will result in a correctly JSON encoded array of strings in the view:

var myJavascriptArray = ["name 1", "name 2", "name 3"];

which you can manipulate as a normal js array:

alert(myJavascriptArray[1]);

Obviously this technique works with more complex object graphs than simple array of strings. You could safe serialize entire object models without worrying about single, double quotes, parenthesis, etc … Of course in addition to all this the javascript serializer will deal with names like Bill O'Brien and properly encode them.