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Render JavaScript variable in HTML as part of a Liquid template

I would like to read a query string in JavaScript, and then modify the link that will be rendered in HTML, however I am rendering the HTML as part of liquid loop. So am not sure how I would read the query string in JavaScript, store the value of query string in a variable, and show it in the html that's rendered as part of a liquid loop.
I am still new to Liquid so any help would be appreciated. I am using this as part of Dynamics 365 portals.

If I understand correctly you could just use javascript to make an html element then edit that element as you wish in javascript via
var x = document.getElementById("myVar");
//Use var x to edit this element here
//OR
var x = document.createElement("myVar");
//Use var x to edit this element here
document.getElementByID is only used if your element is already made in html, where document.createElement is used if you'd like to make a new element rather than using one thats already made.

Converting href perl variables to normal scalar variables

I have these two variables that I am trying to compare. They both have the same value, however, one is a href variable - meaning, it's being read from a file like this
<a href=http://google.com>Variable</a>
It's read like this, but displayed as an anchor tag in the browser, so when I go to compare a value using print "$collect_zids{$key} --> $temp";I see in the browser as
Variable --> Variable
How it appears in the browser. One text another link.
I'm assuming these two values are different hence why this code does not run
if($collect_zids{$key} eq $from_picture){
print "<h1>Hello</h1>";
}
Is there a way I can convert the href variable into a normal scalar variable so that I can compare them?
Thanks!
P.S. I think Javascript might be the only way, however, I don't have any experience with it.

There is no such thing as an "href variable". You have two scalar variables. One contains plain text and the other contains HTML. Your task is to extract the text inside the HTML <a> tag from the HTML variable and to compare that text with the text from the plain text variable.
One way to do that would be to remove the HTML from the HTML variable.
my $html = '<a href=http://google.com>Variable</a>';
my $text = 'Variable';
$html =~ s/<.+?>//g;
if ($html eq $text) {
say "Equal";
} else {
say "Not Equal [$html/$text]";
}
But it cannot be emphasised enough that parsing HTML using a regular expression is very fragile and is guaranteed not to work in many cases. Far better to use a real HTML parser. HTML::Strip is made for this very purpose.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
use HTML::Strip;
my $html = '<a href=http://google.com>Variable</a>';
my $text = 'Variable';
my $parser = HTML::Strip->new;
$html = $parser->parse($html);
if ($html eq $text) {
say "Equal";
} else {
say "Not Equal [$html/$text]";
}
It's also worth pointing out that this is answered in the Perl FAQ
How do I remove HTML from a string?
Use HTML::Strip, or HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but
also attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain
text.
Update: In a comment, you say
I have no way of using these methods since I am not explicitly defining the variable.
Which is clearly not true. How a variable is initialised has no bearing whatsoever on how you can use it.
I assume your HTML text is in the variable $from_picture, so you would strip the HTML with code like this:
my $parser = HTML::Strip->new;
my $stripped = $parser->parse($from_picture);
if($collect_zids{$key} eq $stripped){
print "<h1>Hello</h1>";
}
I have no idea where you got the idea that you couldn't use my solution because I was directly initialising the variables, where you were reading the data from a file. An important skill in programming is the ability to see through complex situations and extract the relevant details. It appears you need to do some more work in this area :-)

I found the answer using the Perl module HTML::FormatText;
use HTML::FormatText;
my $formatter = HTML::FormatText->new();
my $string = HTML::FormatText->format_file("path_to_the_file"); #$string variable to hold the result and the path must be for a file.
After using the HTML::FormatText module, I was able to get the raw string that was being read, instead of it being interpreted as HTML. So, I was getting <a href=http://google.com>Variable</a> returned, instead of just Variable. After getting the raw string, I could use regex to extract the parts that I needed.
Credit to - https://metacpan.org/pod/HTML::FormatText

JavaScript - How to evaluate an EL with a JS variable inside? [duplicate]

I have a form in JSP. I have to populate it based on the request object (from the servlet). How do I use Java Script for accessing request object attributes or if you can suggest me any other better way to populate form dynamically?

You need to realize that Java/JSP is merely a HTML/CSS/JS code producer. So all you need to do is to just let JSP print the Java variable as if it is a JavaScript variable and that the generated HTML/JS code output is syntactically valid.
Provided that the Java variable is available in the EL scope by ${foo}, here are several examples how to print it:
<script>var foo = '${foo}';</script>
<script>someFunction('${foo}');</script>
<div onclick="someFunction('${foo}')">...</div>
Imagine that the Java variable has the value "bar", then JSP will ultimately generate this HTML which you can verify by rightclick, View Source in the webbrowser:
<script>var foo = 'bar';</script>
<script>someFunction('bar');</script>
<div onclick="someFunction('bar')">...</div>
Do note that those singlequotes are thus mandatory in order to represent a string typed variable in JS. If you have used var foo = ${foo}; instead, then it would print var foo = bar;, which may end up in "bar is undefined" errors in when you attempt to access it further down in JS code (you can see JS errors in JS console of browser's web developer toolset which you can open by pressing F12 in Chrome/FireFox23+/IE9+). Also note that if the variable represents a number or a boolean, which doesn't need to be quoted, then it will just work fine.
If the variable happens to originate from user-controlled input, then keep in mind to take into account XSS attack holes and JS escaping. Near the bottom of our EL wiki page you can find an example how to create a custom EL function which escapes a Java variable for safe usage in JS.
If the variable is a bit more complex, e.g. a Java bean, or a list thereof, or a map, then you can use one of the many available JSON libraries to convert the Java object to a JSON string. Here's an example assuming Gson.
String someObjectAsJson = new Gson().toJson(someObject);
Note that this way you don't need to print it as a quoted string anymore.
<script>var foo = ${someObjectAsJson};</script>
See also:
Our JSP wiki page - see the chapter "JavaScript".
How to escape JavaScript in JSP?
Call Servlet and invoke Java code from JavaScript along with parameters
How to use Servlets and Ajax?

If you're pre-populating the form fields based on parameters in the HTTP request, then why not simply do this on the server side in your JSP... rather than on the client side with JavaScript? In the JSP it would look vaguely like this:
<input type="text" name="myFormField1" value="<%= request.getParameter("value1"); %>"/>
On the client side, JavaScript doesn't really have the concept of a "request object". You pretty much have to parse the query string yourself manually to get at the CGI parameters. I suspect that isn't what you're actually wanting to do.

Passing JSON from JSP to Javascript.
I came here looking for this, #BalusC's answer helped to an extent but didn't solve the problem to the core. After digging deep into <script> tag, I came across this solution.
<script id="jsonData" type="application/json">${jsonFromJava}</script>
and in the JS:
var fetchedJson = JSON.parse(document.getElementById('jsonData').textContent);

In JSP file:
<head>
...
<%# page import="com.common.Constants" %>
...
</head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var constant = "<%=Constants.CONSTANT%>"
</script>
This constant variable will be then available to .js files that are declared after the above code.
Constants.java is a java file containing a static constant named CONSTANT.
The scenario that I had was, I needed one constant from a property file, so instead of constructing a property file for javascript, I did this.

In JSP page :
<c:set var="list_size" value="${list1.size() }"></c:set>
Access this value in Javascipt page using :
var list_size = parseInt($('#list_size').val());
I added javascript page in my project externally.

HTML entities in CSS content (convert entities to escape-string at runtime)

I know that html-entities like or ö or ð can not be used inside a css like this:
div.test:before {
content:"text with html-entities like ` ` or `ö` or `ð`";
}
There is a good question with good answers dealing with this problem: Adding HTML entities using CSS content
But I am reading the strings that are put into the css-content from a server via AJAX. The JavaScript running at the users client receives text with embedded html-entities and creates style-content from it instead of putting it as a text-element into an html-element's content. This method helps against thieves who try to steal my content via copy&paste. Text that is not part of the html-document (but part of css-content) is really hard to copy. This method works fine. There is only this nasty problem with that html-entities.
So I need to convert html-entities into unicode escape-sequences at runtime. I can do this either on the server with a perl-script or on the client with JavaScript, But I don't want to write a subroutine that contains a complete list of all existing named entities. There are more than 2200 named entities in html5, as listed here: http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110113/named-character-references.html And I don't want to change my subroutine every time this list gets changed. (Numeric entities are no problem.)
Is there any trick to perfom this conversion with javascript? Maybe by adding, reading and removing content to the DOM? (I am using jQuery)

I've found a solution:
var text = 'Text that contains html-entities';
var myDiv = document.createElement('div');
$(myDiv).html(text);
text = $(myDiv).text();
$('#id_of_a_style-element').html('#id_of_the_protected_div:before{content:"' + text + '"}');
Writing the Question was half way to get this answer. I hope this answer helps others too.

Pull bean value as String for Javascript use

I'm trying to set a component's text based on a bean's value. I'm using jquery for this because the text changes depending on certain conditions.
So, the jquery code looks like this:
window.onload =function(){
$('.pnx-inline-input').on("change keyup paste", function(){
var saveText = #{extra.Active_Save};
$('.save-button .pnx-btn-text').html(saveText);
});
The Extra bean handles the localization. So, let's say that the locale is France, and the text is Enregister. The thing is that when rendered the page, the code segment looks like this
window.onload =function(){
$('.pnx-inline-input').on("change keyup paste", function(){
var saveText = Enregister;
$('.save-button .pnx-btn-text').html(saveText);
});
Of course, Enregister is not defined anywhere, and this causes an error. I need to have to code look like
var saveText = "Enregister";
for this to make sense.
How can I make this happen? Thanks!

JSF is in the context of this question merely a HTML code generator. Just write down those quotes yourself in the HTML template. They are part of generated HTML output, not of the Java variable. You know, JavaScript doesn't run together with Java/JSF (i.e. it's not server side). Instead, it runs together with HTML (i.e. it's client side).
var saveText = "#{extra.Active_Save}";
Note that you still need to take into account that the value is properly JS-escaped, otherwise the whole thing would still break in JavaScript side if the string itself contains doublequotes or other special characters in JS such as newlines. The JSF utility library OmniFaces has an EL function for the very purpose, the #{of:escapeJS()}:
var saveText = "#{of:escapeJS(extra.Active_Save)}";
You can of course also homegrow your own based on e.g. Apache Commons Lang StringEscapeUtils.