Unmatched brace or incomplete EL expression

[vikas Gourishetty]

Hi,

I am using JSTL in my JSP page:

<c:set var="lName" value="${fn:replace(bean.lastName,'\'','')}"/>

I am unable to compile this line of code.

The message I see is "Unmatched brace or incomplete EL expression starting at column 0 at line 0".

Can some one help me regarding this?

Thanks,

-Vikas

[William P O'Sullivan]

Passes JSP validation for me.

Probably something else above this line.

WP

[vikas Gourishetty]

Actually, if I pass on a string "test" in the value it compiles.

I see the problem occuring only if I use the JSTL function.

[Bear Bibeault]

Are you sure thats the line causing the problem?

And why are you stripping apostrophe's from the last name? :shock: If my last name was O'Brien, I'd be pretty ticked off.

[William P O'Sullivan]

you mean like:

<c:set var="lName" value="test"/>

Paste yours.

WP

[vikas Gourishetty]

Exactly.

O'Brian in our application is causing a javascript issue. it is breaking because of the '.

To get rid of that issue we are using this approach, for now, as it does not do a lot of harm for this.

[vikas Gourishetty]

William. Yes you were correct. That was the same code that is not having compilation problems !!

[William P O'Sullivan]

Better not touch O'Sullivan !!!

;)

As I said, I copied your line exactly into a sandbox JSP and it validates fine.

So you are saying this occurs at run-time? When the application is running?

WP

[Bear Bibeault]

vikas Gourishetty wrote:
O'Brian in our application is causing a javascript issue. it is breaking because of the '.

So you're stripping it out instead of properly escaping it? Really?

[vikas Gourishetty]

Bear,

Yeah, I need to think on to find a better solution. But this one is causing few problems, so got to live with this right now. :(


William,

Its just the IDE (Jdeveloper) which is complaining. When I change this in the server's deployment folder (Very bad way). It has solved temporarily.


Thanks,

-Vikas

[William P O'Sullivan]

Does the IDE complain about:

<c:set var="lName" value="${fn:replace(bean.lastName,'dog','cat')}"/>

WP

[vikas Gourishetty]

William,

I tried your code lol ...

<c:set var="lName" value="${fn:replace(bean.lastName,'dog','cat')}"/>  

Observed that this problem is occurring with the apostrophe '.

If I remove that It could compile. But It does not solve the purpose.

I thank your effort and time William.

-Vikas

[Paul Clapham]

Maybe your best approach would be to write a tag library whose purpose is to escape a string for Javascript. Then you wouldn't have to be hard-coding quotes in your EL expression.

[Tim Holloway]

Single and double quotes are 2 of the infamous 5 XML magic characters and therefore can be trouble.

Usually the type of syntax that's in your example works because XML can figure out what you mean from the context, but in cases where it doesn't work, you have to fall back on the entities. The entity for single-quote is "'". Note that final semicolon (;), because it's important.

In any event, trying to do even moderately complex logic in EL is a bugger both to code and debug. Plus, it's a violation of the MVC paradigm that says that the View should display and not attempt to calculate.

So I second Paul's recommendation. Instead of battling EL, you are better off moving the function into a JavaBean.

[vikas Gourishetty]

Thank you Tim.

I will go with your suggestion. I will handle the ( ' ) at the bean level.


@William:

With this line of code my IDE does not complain:



used

& apos; instead of " \' "



Thank you all.

-Vikas