Question

We have an external .js file that we want to include in a number of different pages. The file contains code for sorting a table on the client-side, and uses the ▲ and ▼ characters in the script to indicate which column is sorted and in which direction.

The script was originally written for an ASP.Net page to offload some sorting work from the server to client (prevent sorting postbacks when javascript is enabled). In that case, the encoding is pretty much always UTF-8 and it works great in that context.

However, we also have a number of older Classic ASP pages where we want to include the script. For these pages the encoding is more of a hodgepodge depending on who wrote the page when and what tool they were using (notepad, vs6, vs2005, other html helper). Often no encoding is specified in the page so it’s up to the browser to pick, but there’s really no hard rule for it that I can see.

The problem is that if a different (non-UTF8) encoding is used the ▼ and ▲ characters won’t show up correctly. I tried using html entities instead, but couldn’t get them to work well from the javascript.

How can I make the script adjust for the various potential encodings so that the ‘special’ characters always show up correctly? Are there different characters I could be using, or a trick I missed to make the html entities work from javascript?

Here is the snippet where the characters are used:

// get sort direction, arrow var dir = 1; if (self.innerHTML.indexOf(' ▲') > -1)                 dir = -1; var arrow = (dir == 1)?' ▲':' ▼';   // SORT   -- function that actually sorts- not relevant to the question if  (!SimpleTableSort(t.id, self.cellIndex, dir, sortType)) return;  //remove all arrows for (var c = 0,cl=t.rows[0].cells.length;c<cl;c+=1) {     var cell = t.rows[0].cells[c];     cell.innerHTML = cell.innerHTML.replace(' ▲', '').replace(' ▼', ''); }  // set new arrow self.innerHTML += arrow; 

For the curious, the code points I ended up using with the accepted answer were \u25B4 and \u25BC.

Answer 1

You want Javascript Unicode escapes i.e. ‘\uxxxx’, where ‘xxxx’ is the Unicode code point for the character. I believe ‘\u25B2’ and ‘\u25BC’ are the two you need.