Javascript and Struts HTML problem

Question

Hi all,
I write the following script in my jsp page, but this one does not produce the output at all :
<script type="text/javascript">
     document.write("<input type="button" value='<bean:message key="btn.show"/>' onclick='onShowClick(this.form,"<bean:write name="vo" property="id"/>",true)'/>")
</script>While the following script without Javascript works as expected :
<input type="button" value='<bean:message key="btn.show"/>' onclick='onShowClick(this.form,"<bean:write name="vo" property="id"/>",true)'/>What is wrong ?
Thanks in advance,
Setya

Answer 1

Sure theres an easier way - don't use javascript?
Why do you want to do this javascript and document.write?
Can't you do it using JSP?
About the quotes:
The same quote that starts a string, ends it.
You are writing a javascript string, so the first unescaped single quote it comes across will end it.
Unfortunately in the middle of this string, you are writing HTML onclick event, with some javascript which ALSO needs quotes escaped(sigh)
So you have a javascript string producing some HTML, which also embeds a javascript string (now thats complicated quoting). Mixing the quotes with the struts tags just makes this a nightmare.
If you want to use quotes in the middle of a string you have to escape them.
Simple examples:
document.write("hello world");  // no quotes
document.write("hello \"Java\" ");  // escaping the quotes
document.write('hello "Java" ') // because we used a different quote, we don't have to escape it
And mixing the two:
document.write(' hello "Java\'s buddy" ');  // double quotes don't need to be escaped but the single quote does.Your line of code should be
document.write('<input type="button" value="<bean:message key="btn.show"/>" onclick="onShowClick(this.form,\'<bean.write name="vo" property="id"/>\',true)"')Note that I escaped the single quotes around the string attribute to the javascript method. Needed to do this, so as not to disturb the double quotes encapsulating the onclick="..." method.
Good luck,
evnafets