A forum in ASP

[bartdude]

Hi all !

I'm developping a Discussion forum in VBscript , and i would like to avoid users putting HTML tags into their messages...I'm quite sure there's a function which can handle this , but I just can't find it anymore.

Could anyone help me please ???

Thx

Bartdude

 

[Geee]

Yep, I found this function somewhere that strips out anything between <> tags.

Function FilterHTML(strToFilter)
Dim strTemp
strTemp = strToFilter
While (Instr(1,strTemp,&quot;<&quot > 0) AND (Instr(1, strTemp, &quot;>&quot > 0)
strTemp = Left(strTemp, Instr(1, strTemp, &quot;<&quot-1) & Right(strTemp, Len(strTemp)-Instr(1,strTemp, &quot;>&quot)
WEnd
FilterHTML = strTemp
End Function


Not my fubnction but I use it a lot.

Hope this helps.

G -GTM Solutions, Home of USITE-
-=

http://www.gtmsolutions.com=-

 

[danielhai]

probably want to add something that checks for a >, otherwise, a post starting with < alskdjflaskdjflaskjdflaksdjflaskdjflakdjla

will make the whole thing blank ...

 

[Geee]

Um, this code does check for a >. It removes anything contained within <>. Ie the string &quot;abcd<efg>hijk&quot; would become &quot;abcdhijk&quot;.

G -GTM Solutions, Home of USITE-
-=

http://www.gtmsolutions.com=-

 

[Ovatvvon]

Here is a better way to do it:


<%
Dim userMsg
userMsg = Request.Form(&quot;theMsg&quot

' Here comes how you weed-out the code you don't want...
userMsg = Replace(userMsg, &quot;<&quot;, &quot;&amp;lt;&quot
userMsg = Replace(userMsg, &quot;>&quot;, &quot;&amp;gt;&quot

Response.write(userMsg)
%>


It replaces the current variable &quot;userMsg&quot; which contains the message from the form on the last page. It replaces all the &quot;<&quot; symbols in the message typed with &quot;&amp;lt;&quot; which is the ascii symbol for &quot;<&quot; but is not recognized by html as a command. The same goes for the other symbol.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions or need more explanation.
-Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[harmmeijer]

Or you could leave the html tags in but force the browser to display them as text and not interperate them as tags.
You can do it like so:
strOrg = &quot;some text<form>some more text&quot;
strReplace = Replace(strOrg,&quot;<&quot;,&quot;&lt;&quot;,1)
strReplace = Replace(strReplace, &quot;>&quot;, &quot;&gt;&quot;, 1)
response.write strReplace

 

[vasah20]

Why not just use Server.HTMLEncode?
ex:
dim reformattedStr
reformattedStr = Server.HTMLEncode(strToFormat)

That'll escape all the <> marks to their respective &xxx; signs. That might leave some undesired functionality, though, since the bare tags will appear in the message.

The best way would be to strip it out using regexp. this needs VBS 5.5, though, since it's a non-greedy expression.

Dim re,strippedStr
set re = new regexp
re.pattern = &quot;<.*?>&quot; 'search for anything between <>
re.global = true
re.ignorecase = true
strippedStr = re.replace(strToSearch,&quot;&quot;) 'replaces the tags with &quot;&quot;
set re = nothing

in my example, strippedStr will have the message without any html tags inside it. this will strip out everything between <> tags, though, so things like <grin> will get removed.

for more info on this, see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

hth leo

------------
Leo Mendoza
lmendoza@students.depaul.edu

 

[Churchill]

I prefer Ovatvvon's method. Especially when doing forums where the user will want to paste code for others to view.

Also, you can combine it with another function that replaces another set of strings with their HTML equivalents. This would enable you to give the user some formatting control. This kind of feature is quite easy and popular.

e.g. and might be replaced with the HTML Bold tags.

Make sure you put them in the right order, or you'll end up converting your forum tags () into html tags (<B>) and then ending up with <B> You'll need to convert your existing html tags using ovatvvons method, then use another replace to convert your forum codes into html.

Also, if you provide an edit function, rememember to do these functions in reverse, so that it appears correctly in the text area.