HTML special characters in form input

Question

In my site I store form input in my database. Before I store
the data, I parse out smart quotes, en dashes, and other extended
special characters and convert them into HTHML quivalents such as
’
All is well and good until the user goes to edit their info.
In my form these characters show up in my <input> tags as
their long-winded HTML equivalents, such as &#8217; instead of
a smart apostrophe.
Is there any way to convert these back to the special
characters from the HTML on the form input text fields so that
users can edit them without being confused?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hmmm, well I ran the MX 6.1 updater and installed the two hot
fixes that had to do with null pointer exceptions and it still does
not work.
Here is the detailed error I'm getting, if it helps. Any more
ideas? Thanks again for the help, I'm really stuck on this one...
The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which
usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some
system code.
Null Pointers are another name for undefined values.
The error occurred in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\store\index.cfm:
line 1
1 : <cfquery name="getBooks" datasource="#dsn#">
2 : SELECT *
3 : FROM products
Please try the following:
* Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are
using the correct syntax.
* Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your
problem.
Browser Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
Remote Address 127.0.0.1
Referrer
Date/Time 09-Oct-07 02:20 PM
Stack Trace
at
cfindex2ecfm1770128649.runPage(C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\store\index.cfm:1)
java.lang.NullPointerException
at coldfusion.sql.QueryTable.populate(QueryTable.java:260)
at coldfusion.sql.QueryTable.populate(QueryTable.java:159)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.getRowSet(Executive.java:505)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:974)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:886)
at coldfusion.sql.SqlImpl.execute(SqlImpl.java:236)
at
coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.doEndTag(QueryTag.java:447)
at
cfindex2ecfm1770128649.runPage(C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\store\index.cfm:1)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:147)
at
coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:357)
at
coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:62)
at
coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:107)
at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:80)
at
coldfusion.filter.LicenseFilter.invoke(LicenseFilter.java:24)
at
coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:47)
at
coldfusion.filter.BrowserDebugFilter.invoke(BrowserDebugFilter.java:52)
at
coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:2 8)
at
coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:35)
at
coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:43)
at
coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:105)
at
jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:91)
at
jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)
at
jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:249)
at
jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:527)
at
jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:192)
at
jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:348)
at
jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:451)
at
jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:294)
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)