How to escape new line chars in php to output into a javascript string value?

Question

I pulling out some html/text strings that I need to insert into a javascript variable.

eg, that's how it would look in php:

echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n";
echo "var myvar='{$value}'";
echo "\n</script>";

The problem with the above approach is that some special characters would actually break the javascript code.

So, I tried using htmlspecialchars:

htmlspecialchars($value,11,'utf-8',true); //11 stands for ENT_QUOTES|ENT_SUBSTITUTE

This did replace some unusual chars and most importantly the quotes.

However the new line chars pass it by and break my javascript.

So how could I escape the new line chars? I need to preserve them to be used later in the textareas.

*EDIT* I will post a sample value of my variable. (They are actually the input from Tiny_mce)

 <p>You've been...</p>
 <p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8d7OBluielc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" width="640" height="360"></iframe></p>

@Anonymous if you show us an example for the content of $value it would help. — Nir Alfasi
– Nir Alfasi, Commented Aug 18, 2012 at 8:38

deceze · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-18 08:43:13Z

11

<script type="text/javascript">
    var myvar = <?php echo json_encode($value); ?>;
</script>

JSON == Javascript notation == the proper encoding/escaping method for any values output to Javascript.

answered Aug 18, 2012 at 8:43

deceze♦

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2 Comments

Anonymous Over a year ago

I have a question though, would it handle UTF-8 characters?

deceze Over a year ago

In fact: This function only works with UTF-8 encoded data.

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