ExpressionEngine rendering JS code with { } brackets

Question

Is there a way to force expression engine to NOT render items within curly brackets as EE code? The google chart tools uses javascript code that contains curly { } brackets,

Answer 1

ExpressionEngine's Template Class parses curly braces {} as template variables, looking for three kinds of variables: single, pair, and conditional variables:

// Single Variable
{summary}

// Pair Variable
{category} ... {/category}

// Conditional Variable
{if segment_2 != ""} ... {/if}

Curly braces in CSS are considered a special condition.

For example, the following CSS is acceptable to place anywhere in a template, and gets intelligently parsed:

Unfortunately, JavaScript is handled differently and prevents the Advanced Conditionals Parser from processing anything in tags. For example, the following JavaScript with curly braces all on one line:

Will be parsed by ExpressionEngine as a template variable and rendered as:

You'll notice everything starting at the opening { and ending with the closing } curly brace gets parsed and replaced! As a workaround, you can place the braces on separate lines and avoid this problem:

If you've written a JavaScript function that expects values from ExpressionEngine, just place your braces on separate lines — which is a good coding convention and is optimal for readability:

As suggested by Ben, you can change this behavior by setting a Hidden Configuration Variable: $conf['protect_javascript'] = 'n';