Weird characters in html text. Inserting `;` inside a variable string

Question

I am seeing weird characters while using html text in python. Its just this one name which is inserting weird character ; into it.

My html text looks like this:

text="<font name=Helvetica color=white size=8>Name:  </font><font name=Helvetica-Bold color=white size=8>%s </font>" % name

where name = 'A&B CDE F.' But the output is: 'Name: A&B; CDE F.'

I cannot reproduce this behaviour. Can you add more context? — dorado
– dorado, Commented Jul 17, 2019 at 15:54
Hi! Sorry I did not give much info. I am using Paragraph from reportlab and using this text to draw on the PDF. Turtlefight's solution below solved my issue. — Infra Red Spectrum
– Infra Red Spectrum, Commented Jul 17, 2019 at 17:25

Turtlefight · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-17 15:58:20Z

2

when interpolating variables into html strings / templates, you need to properly escape the string.

The Ampersand Character is used in html for character escapes, so you need to replace it with &.

For Python 2 you can use cgi.escape:

import cgi
text="<font>%s</font>" % cgi.escape(name)

For Python 3 you can choose between cgi.escape and html.escape:

import html
text="<font>%s</font>" % html.escape(name)

Also check out the python wiki page for html escapes for a comprehensive overview of the different html escape functions in python :)

answered Jul 17, 2019 at 15:58

Turtlefight

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