How to escape '$' and '#' in Facelets/EL?

Question

I'm using Java Facelets and jQuery, however the expression

$('...')

in jQuery conflicts with EL expression, how do I escape the jQuery's one?

I'd like to escape a large chunk of Javascript, too.

ANSWERED

To convert the existing JSP to Facelets xhtml, it's convenient to just wrap the existing javascript by <![CDATA[ ... ]]>. However, the output scripts for <script> are wrapped by <!-- --> comment, which conflicts with CDATA section:

<script><![CDATA[ scripts... ]]></script>

=> <script><!-- <![CDATA[ scripts... ]]> --></script>

To resolve this problem, you should also comment out the CDATA:

<script>/* <![CDATA[ */ scripts... /* ]]> */</script>

=> <script><!-- /* <![CDATA[ */ scripts... /* ]]> */--></script>

See also When is a CDATA section necessary within a script tag?.

Gunplay

As per your update, the real problem comes clear: you're writing JS code raw in a XML file and the XML parser is falling over $ which should be represented as &. Apart from the ugly CDATA workaround, the best solution is to put JS code in its own .js file. After all, the question title and body does not describe the real problem and is therefore misleading. – Penates

Answer 1

This should normally not conflict. EL uses ${} syntax. Anyway, you could either use jQuery() instead (the $() is just a shorthand) or simply put JS code in its own .js file.

Penates

Answer 2

Should anyone need to, the Expression Language Specification Version 2.2 Maintenance Release describes how to escape EL expressions:

To generate literal values that include the character sequence "${" or "#{", the developer can choose to use a composite expression as shown here:

${'${'}exprA}
#{'#{'}exprB}

The resulting values would then be the strings ${exprA} and #{exprB}.

Alternatively, the escape characters \$ and \# can be used to escape what would otherwise be treated as an eval-expression. Given the literal-expressions:

\${exprA}
\#{exprB}

Unreserved