How can I tell Rails/HAML to not escape a URL?

Question

I have this code:

= link_to "unsubscribe instantly", "*|UNSUB|*".html_safe

That generates this HTML:

<a href="*%7CUNSUB%7C*">unsubscribe instantly</a>

The | characters are escaped. That won't work, as I'm sending this HTML to a service that is supposed to replace *|UNSUB|* with an unsubscribe url.

Instead, I want Rails/HAML to generate this:

<a href="*|UNSUB|*">unsubscribe instantly</a>

I went to http://haml-lang.com/try.html and entered %a{:href => "*|UNSUB|*"} unsubscribe and the output was what I was expecting. So I'm guessing this is a Rails thing.

UPDATE: I tried this on a new Rails 3.1 application and the pipes aren't being escaped -- which is what I wanted. There's something weird happening with my main rails application that's causing the URLs to be escaped -- looking into it further now.

UPDATE: I figured it out. I had some Rack middleware that was running something like:

content = Nokogiri(response)
# ... processing
return content.to_html

This was encoding the stuff inside the URLs. I asked a related question here: Preventing Nokogiri from escaping characters in URLs

Did you tryed `!= link_to("unsubscribe instantly", "*|UNSUB|*".html_safe).html_safe` ? [post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5619577/html-is-being-escaped-in-link-to) — Mark Huk, Dec 14 '11 at 20:42

Thibaut Barrère · Answer 1 · 2011-12-14T20:32:58.957

1

Are these really escaped? I just made a test with rails 3.0.3 (edit: and rails 3.1.1), with those:

= link_to 'unsubscribe instantly', '*|UNSUB|*'   
%a{:href => '*|UNSUB|*'} unsubscribe instantly
:plain
  <a href="*|UNSUB|*">unsubscribe instantly</a>

then I used curl on the page an the pipe seems to be there, as is:

curl http://localhost:3000/about | grep UNSUB
<a href="*|UNSUB|*">unsubscribe instantly</a>
<a href='*|UNSUB|*'>unsubscribe instantly</a>
<a href="*|UNSUB|*">unsubscribe instantly</a>

edited Dec 14 '11 at 20:32

answered Dec 14 '11 at 20:20

Thibaut Barrère

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Weird. I used curl to test, and the pipes are still being escaped. I'll try on a new rails application. – Joe Van Dyk Dec 14 '11 at 21:02
On a new Rails application, the URLs aren't being escaped (which is what I want). I must have some different configurations or gems in the other Rails application I was using to test. – Joe Van Dyk Dec 14 '11 at 21:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 14 '11 at 22:17

1

I figured it out. I had some Rack middleware that was running something like:

content = Nokogiri(response)
# ... processing
return content.to_html

This was encoding the stuff inside the URLs.

answered Dec 14 '11 at 22:17

Joe Van Dyk

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 14 '11 at 18:52

0

Have you tried skipping the link_to and just to create the link tag directly like

a{:href=>"*|UNSUB|*"} unsubscribe instantly

answered Dec 14 '11 at 18:52

Rob Di Marco

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HAML will convert that to unsubscribe instantly, which isn't what I wanted. – Joe Van Dyk Dec 14 '11 at 18:58
How about `a(href='*|UNSUB|*') unsubscribe instantly` ? – Chris Bailey Dec 14 '11 at 19:36

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 14 '11 at 18:53

0

does this work for you:

=! link_to "unsubscribe instantly", "*|UNSUB|*"

(realise that it's more or less equivalent, but might just make the difference)

answered Dec 14 '11 at 18:53

Chris Bailey

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Sorry my fault! What i meant was `!= link_to "unsubscribe instantly", "*|UNSUB|*"` – Chris Bailey Dec 14 '11 at 19:37
Still no luck. Outputs unsubscribe – Joe Van Dyk Dec 14 '11 at 19:51

Webjedi · Answer 5 · 2011-12-14T19:20:31.927

0

I don't have a place to test this but would this work?

- html = "<a href="*|UNSUB|*">unsubscribe instantly</a>"
= raw html

edited Dec 14 '11 at 19:20

answered Dec 14 '11 at 19:10

Webjedi

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That still seems to generate unsubscribe instantly – Joe Van Dyk Dec 14 '11 at 19:16

How can I tell Rails/HAML to not escape a URL?

5 Answers5