Want to Strip Chars from a String

WebDevel · January 7th, 2004, 03:33 PM

Can someone point me in the right direction, please?

I have a multi-page online form.

I save the contents of each page in a cookie, using Name/Value pairs
-- with the equal-sign ("=") and the semi-colon (";") as delimiters.

The above was working fine.

Then I discovered that if the user enters an equal-sign or a semi-colon in a text box or textarea field, my Name/Value pairs no longer work.

So I tried to write a function (stripDelim.js) to be included in each page of the form, which would take the string that the user entered and strip from it any equal-sign or semi-colon characters it encountered, before returning it and adding it to the cookie string.

However, whether I say:
     if ( charAt(strOld[i]) == charAt(strDelim[j]) )
or I say:
     if ( strOld.charAt[i] == strDelim.charAt[j] )
I keep getting an error (in the 1st case) or the value "undefined" when I display these variables in an alert box (in the 2nd case). .

-------------------------------------------

Below is my function:

strDelim = ";="; // string containing cookie delimiters

function stripDelim(strOld){
/*
input = string entered by user ("strOld")
output = user string with delimiters stripped from it ("strNew")
if the character at strOld[i] is not a cookie delimiter, then add the character to strNew
when done, return strNew
*/

   var strNew = "";

   for (var i = 0; i < strOld.length; i++)
   {
       for (var j = 0; j < strDelim.length; j++)
       {

// if ( charAt(strOld[i]) == charAt(strDelim[j]) )
       if ( strOld.charAt[i] == strDelim.charAt[j] )
         {
            // do nothing
         }

         else
         {
            strNew += strOld.charAt[i];
         }

         alert ("strOld.charAt[i] = " + strOld.charAt[i] + " strDelim.charAt[j] = " + strDelim.charAt[j] + " strNew = " + strNew);

       } // end inner for
   } // end outer for

   return strNew;

} // end function

-----------------------------------

Below is how I included the function in the 1st page of my form (N.B., if it matters, I also had another script in the Head, specific to Page 1):

<head>
<title>Multipage Application Form - Page 1</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="stripDelim.js">
</script>

<script language="JavaScript">
var strForm1 = ""; // global variable

function gotoNext(){
// blah, blah, blah
} // end function gotoNext()

</head>

---------------------------------------

Below is how I called stripDelim() in my function gotoNext() for Page 1:

var strCookie = "StartForm1;";

   for (var i = 0; i < frmPage1.elements.length - 1; i++)
{
     if (frmPage1.elements[i].type == "text" || frmPage1.elements[i].type == "textarea")
         {
           strCookie += stripDelim(frmPage1.elements[i].value) + ";";
         }
     else
         {
        strCookie += frmPage1.elements[i].value + ";";
         }

   } // end IF
} // end For-Loop

joefawcett · January 8th, 2004, 06:28 AM

I would suggest you use the escape function, or if your target browsers allow it the encodeURIComponent function on the string before you put in the equals sign and semi-colon:

Code:

var sName = "Joe=";
var sValue = "Fawcett;";
var sCookie = escape(sName) + "=" + escape(sValue) + ";";
alert(sCookie);

or you could use regular expressions and the replace method.

--

Joe

planoie · January 10th, 2004, 01:08 PM

Here's a link to a javascript example that uses cookies and seems to handle commas and equal signs in the data.

http://javascript.internet.com/cooki...ok.html#source

Peter
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