Question

Well i have var message, which has any type of character…

I replace 🙂 with <img src="..." .../> and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id with <a href="...">...</a>

Then I run $(".chat_message").html(message);

What must I do to embed anything excepts the html tags I make as html code to screen??

Answer 1

What must I do to embed anything excepts the html tags I make as html code to screen??

I’m going to assume you want each character in message except the ones you replace with HTML tags to show literally on the screen.

var messageHTML = message.replace(/&/g, "&")
    .replace(/</g, "&lt;").replace(/>/g, "&gt;");

will put the HTML equivalent of message in messageHTML*.

Once messageHTML contains a string of HTML, you can replace all occurrences of ":)" safely and correctly since that is just a simple HTML -> HTML conversion.

messageHTML = messageHTML.replace(/:\)/g, "<img ...>");

Now you can use jQuery’s .html(messageHTML) to inject message with your tags into the DOM.

* – the white-space will differ unless you’re embedding in a context with CSS white-space: pre or white-space: pre-wrap