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How can I use HTML character entities inside EL in JSF?
Asked Answered
Solved jsf-2facelets
E

1

6

I want to use the em dash in a value attribute for an h:link component.

Here is my attempt (currently not working):

<h:link value="#{somethingHere} &mdash; #{anotherHere}">
    <f:param name="identifier" value="#{somethingHere.identifier}" />
</h:link>

This results in a FaceletsException:

FaceletException: Error Parsing /index.xhtml: Error Traced[line: 13]
                The entity "mdash" was referenced, but not declared.
at com.sun.faces.facelets.compiler.SAXCompiler.doCompile(SAXCompiler.java:394)
...

I know I can use an HTML anchor instead, but is there a way to do it inside an Expression Language (EL) expression? What is the correct way to do this?

Enlistee answered 16/8, 2012 at 17:45 Comment(0)
O
11

Facelets is XML based and processed by a XML parser. The &mdash; is a HTML entity and not recognized in XML. Only the five listed in this Wikipedia page, &quot;, &amp;, &apos;, &lt; and &gt;, are recognized in XML.

Facelets/XML uses by default already UTF-8, and HTML entities are basically a leftover of pre-UTF-8 era and not necessary in UTF-8 documents, so you could just put the actual character plain/unencoded in the template (provided that the editor is able to save the file as UTF-8).

In other words, simply adjust

<h:link value="#{somethingHere} &mdash; #{anotherHere}">

to

<h:link value="#{somethingHere} — #{anotherHere}">

If this isn't an option for some reason, then you could instead use a numeric character reference in the format &#nnnn;, like as one would use &#160; to represent a &nbsp; in XML. You can find the numeric character reference in fileformat.info: Unicode Character 'EM DASH' (U+2014)

Encodings

HTML Entity (decimal) &#8212;

So, this should do for you:

<h:link value="#{somethingHere} &#8212; #{anotherHere}">

An alternative, which should satisfy the exact error message more, is to declare the entity reference explicitly yourself in the doctype.

<!DOCTYPE html [
    <!ENTITY mdash "&#8212;"> 
]>

But this isn't the general recommendation/approach as you'd need to repeat this over every single XML file wherein the character is been used.

Ochs answered 16/8, 2012 at 17:51 Comment(3)
Could you expand about why isn't recommended the entity declaration in the doctype? – Enlistee
It would explicitly need to be placed in every single XML template using this character, you can't just put it in master template or so. I'd personally just put the — character plain/unencoded in the template. If it fails for you (Mojibake, etc), perhaps you'd need to reconfigure your editor to save files as UTF-8. Facelets uses by itself already by default UTF-8 to parse/serve XML files. – Ochs
Understood, thanks again! I'll use the numeric reference, to prevent Mojibake for other developers. – Enlistee

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