How do I escape a string inside JavaScript code inside an onClick handler?

Question

Maybe I\'m just thinking about this too hard, but I\'m having a problem figuring out what escaping to use on a string in some JavaScript code inside a link\'s onClick handle

Answer 1

Depending on the server-side language, you could use one of these:

.NET 4.0

string result = System.Web.HttpUtility.JavaScriptStringEncode("jsString")

Java

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils;
...

String result = StringEscapeUtils.escapeJavaScript(jsString);

Python

import json
result = json.dumps(jsString)

PHP

$result = strtr($jsString, array('\\' => '\\\\', "'" => "\\'", '"' => '\\"', 
                                 "\r" => '\\r', "\n" => '\\n' ));

Ruby on Rails

<%= escape_javascript(jsString) %>