HTML: stop rendering HTML code inside div

Question

If i write something like below inside textarea

<strong>test</strong>

inside textarea and then display it inside a div. It shows the text in bold letter instead of showing the html code as it is. So how can i avoid rendering html code. I just want to show as it is the text was entered by user.

@Madthew — Since your attempt to replicate it doesn't include a textarea or a div and doesn't do anything to place what is typed in said textarea into said div, that isn't surprising. — Quentin, May 08 '13 at 16:31
http://jsfiddle.net/WPQLP/2/ so it should work now. Forgot to update dhe jsfiddle. — Madthew, May 08 '13 at 16:33
@Madthew — The question says "I just want to show as it is the text was entered by user" and "display it inside a div" — Your example hard codes the data into the textarea (so not entered by the user) and doesn't display it in a div at all. — Quentin, May 08 '13 at 16:35

Quentin · Answer 1 · 2013-05-08T16:52:39.983

3

You haven't shown us any code, but since you have tagged this jQuery I'll assume you have something like:

$('div').html(
     $('textarea').val()
);

Use the text method instead, so what the user has typed is treated as text instead of HTML.

$('div').text(
     $('textarea').val()
);

See a demonstration.

edited May 08 '13 at 16:52

answered May 08 '13 at 16:29

Quentin

857,932
118
1,152
1,264

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

2

you'll need to escape the html formatting

this should work

var someHtmlString = "<strong>test</strong>";
var escaped = $("div.someClass").text(someHtmlString).html();

source

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

1
1

answered May 08 '13 at 16:28

Jean-Bernard Pellerin

12,351
9
57
76

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 08 '13 at 17:33

You can use the <pre> tag so that it shows the user input as is. This preserves all formatting such as spaces and newlines

<textarea  rows="4" cols="50"></textarea>
<div>
   <pre id="output">
   </pre>
</div>

js

$('textarea').keyup(function(){
$('#output').text($(this).val()); 
});

http://jsfiddle.net/WPQLP/5/

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 08 '13 at 16:28

1

You need to escape the < and > characters to their HTML entities.

&lt;strong&gt;test&lt;/strong&gt;

JSFiddle

answered May 08 '13 at 16:28

epascarello

195,511
20
184
225

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 08 '13 at 16:30

0

<strong>test</strong> produces <strong>test</strong>

These are called HTML entities and behave like that because normally <foo> means a HTML tag, and it's supposed to be rendered. Read more about HTML entities on w3schools

answered May 08 '13 at 16:30

Mateusz

3,006
4
26
41

HTML: stop rendering HTML code inside div

5 Answers5