CFLib.org – Common Function Library Project

Description:
This was inspired by the xmlFormat2 function. I was worried about the performance of that function, however, and so rewrote the same basic functionality using the REMatch function that was introduced in CF8.

Return Values:
Returns a string.

Example:

<cfset s = "text with high-ascii (#chr(982)#) char.">
<cfoutput>
<pre>
#xmlFormat(s)#
#xmlSafeText(s)#
</pre>
</cfoutput>

Parameters:

Full UDF Source:

<!---
 Replacement for XmlFormat that also replaces all special characters.
 
 @param txt      String to format. (Required)
 @return Returns a string. 
 @author David Hammond (dave@modernsignal.com) 
 @version 0, July 12, 2009 
--->
<cffunction name="XmlSafeText" hint="Replaces all characters that would break an xml file." returnType="string" output="false">        
    <cfargument name="txt" type="string" required="true">
    <cfset var chars = "">
    <cfset var replaced = "">
    <cfset var i = "">
    
    <!--- Use XmlFormat function first --->
    <cfset txt = XmlFormat(txt)>
    <!--- Get all other characters to replace. ---> 
    <cfset chars = REMatch("[^[:ascii:]]",txt)>
    <!--- Loop through characters and do replace. Maintain a list of characters already replaced to avoid duplicate work. --->
    <cfloop index="i" from="1" to="#ArrayLen(chars)#">
        <cfif listFind(replaced,chars[i]) is 0>
            <cfset txt = Replace(txt,chars[i],"&##" & asc(chars[i]) & ";","all")>
            <cfset replaced = ListAppend(replaced,chars[i])>
        </cfif>
    </cfloop>
    <cfreturn txt>
</cffunction>