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javascript replace limitation?

Adam Stoller

I was about to post a resolution to my issue with making a custom VF function for inserting hyperlinks with title/alt-text, when I ran into a problem with the javascript I'm using in the HTML page that's being run for the form to be filled in -- and I'm hoping someone here can make sense of this -- and better yet, tell mehow I can fix it.

To start off with - Ektron provides a function for getting the HTML associated with the selected text - so that when you select something like some text you'd actually get a string that looks like "<a title="foo bar baz" href="//some_text" target=_blank>" (their routine automatically strips double-quotes from around attribute values that don't contain white-space [ugh]) - so I wrote this code (selectedHTML contains the string as indicated above):...
var target = '';
...
if (selectedHTML.match(/target="/)){
target = selectedHTML.replace(/^.*target="([^"]+)".*$/, "$1");
}
else if (selectedHTML.match(/target='/)){
target = selectedHTML.replace(/^.*target='([^']+)".*$/, "$1");
}
else if (selectedHTML.match(/target=/)){
target = selectedHTML.replace(/^.*target\s*=\s*([^\s>]+)[\s>].*$/, "$1");
}
alert("target: "+target); //#=#
...Now if the actual selectedHTML code associated with the text I have selected in VFE is:
<A title=0123456789013456789 href="/graphics/sentry.jpg" target=_blank>ddd</A>
then everything works out fine, and the alert shows:
target: _blank

However, if the actual selectedHTML code associated with the text I have selected in VFE is:
<A title=01234567890123456789 href="/graphics/sentry.jpg" target=_blank>ddd</A>
then the alert shows:
target: <A title=01234567890123456789 href="/graphics/sentry.jpg" target=_blank>ddd</A>

I can find no reference to the replace() function having a string length limitation - the total string length we're talking about here is around 54 characters -- and I've gotten it to fail the same way with strings identical in length to that which worked - like:
<A title=01 3456789013456789 href="/graphics/sentry.jpg" target=_blank>ddd</A>
(note space where first 2 used to be)

sometimes it will even work a few times and then fail without my having changed anything!

Anyone have any ideas?

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

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Comments

akshathp

This code is running fine on my system. It always gives the correct result.
I am using Win2K Server with IE 6.0 browser.
Which OS and Browser are you using?
If you have some other system available, then can you have it tested on them?

Akshat Pramod Sharma

Adam Stoller

I may try to replicate it on another server. The customer's environment is TS6.1SP1 on Solaris8 I believe it's IE6 on WindowsXP.

What's so maddening about it as that the failure seems to be so variable. It's not just the length of the overall string (though I think that's part of it), it's not just white-space characters.
I've tried with RegExp objects too and it still has problems.

I may try to create a stand-alone HTML page to try this out in and see if I can get it to fail / succeed *outside* of VFE in the various environments I have available to me - especially the customer's, tomorrow, since that's my last day on-site.

If anyone else thinks of anything - please feel free to chip-in.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Adam Stoller

I still don't understand what was happening - seems like it might be a VFE-javascript bug, but I don't have time to waste tracking it down right now.

I created a simple HTML page and ran it under a couple of browsers on my Mac - and was unable to reproduce the problem.
This morning I tried running the simple HTML file on the client machine I am using at the customer site, with the same browser as I use for TeamSite here - and the script ran fine.
I copied the code back into my href508.htm file for the VF customization - and it still had problems.

So - I decided to devide-and-conquor and modified the code so that I split() the selectedHTML string into smaller parts and processed the smaller parts rather than trying to process the entire string of html text.

While there may still be some limit out there that I haven't reached yet - this seems to be holding up sufficiently for me to consider the job done.

The href508.html file is attached for anyone who wants it.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Adam Stoller

Arrgh - typo in attachment - as I don't see anyway to edit the attachment, here's the new one (I spelled "input" as "inptu" twice :-)

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com