Question

Is there a built-in jQuery function for encoding a string as HTML?

I’m trying to take the text a user types into a text box and then put that text into a different area of the page. My plan was to take the .val() from the text box and supply that to the .html() of the <div> element. Perhaps there’s a good jQuery plugin to help with this (if it’s not built-in) or a better way overall to accomplish this goal.

For example, if the user puts <Victory!> in the text box, I’d want the other part of the page to actually show the text <Victory!> instead of nothing being visible.

Answer 1

Instead of .html() use .text() for this. This will encode the output when putting it in the destination element. Here’s a quick demo showing the differences, try something like "<script>": http://jsfiddle.net/6WG47/