Question

I’m setting the following in the request attribute:

confirmMsg = "REf No: \n 112"; 
req.setAttribute("confirmMsg", confirmMsg); 

I need the above to be displayed like(in alert box) :

Ref No:

112

I’m using the following onload function in my JavaScript to show the message on loading the page.

function onLoad() {
 var msg = "${confirmMsg}";
  if(msg != null && msg != "") {
    alert(msg);
   }

}

The above throws a script error? How do I pass the newline character?

Answer 1

The \n needs to be JavaScript-escaped to be put in a JavaScript string literal.

Use commons-lang StringEscapeUtils.escapeECMAScript() to eascape the message, and pass this escaped message to your JSP.