View Source Phoenix.HTML (Phoenix.HTML v4.0.0)

Building blocks for working with HTML in Phoenix.

This library provides three main functionalities:

HTML safety
Form abstractions
A tiny JavaScript library to enhance applications

HTML safety

One of the main responsibilities of this package is to provide convenience functions for escaping and marking HTML code as safe.

By default, data output in templates is not considered safe:

<%= "<hello>" %>

will be shown as:

&lt;hello&gt;

User data or data coming from the database is almost never considered safe. However, in some cases, you may want to tag it as safe and show its "raw" contents:

<%= raw "<hello>" %>

Form handling

See Phoenix.HTML.Form.

JavaScript library

This project ships with a tiny bit of JavaScript that listens to all click events to:

Support data-confirm="message" attributes, which shows a confirmation modal with the given message
Support data-method="patch|post|put|delete" attributes, which sends the current click as a PATCH/POST/PUT/DELETE HTTP request. You will need to add data-to with the URL and data-csrf with the CSRF token value
Dispatch a "phoenix.link.click" event. You can listen to this event to customize the behaviour above. Returning false from this event will disable data-method. Stopping propagation will disable data-confirm

To use the functionality above, you must load priv/static/phoenix_html.js into your build tool.

Overriding the default confirmation behaviour

You can override the default implementation by hooking into phoenix.link.click. Here is an example:

window.addEventListener('phoenix.link.click', function (e) {
  // Introduce custom behaviour
  var message = e.target.getAttribute("data-prompt");
  var answer = e.target.getAttribute("data-prompt-answer");
  if(message && answer && (answer != window.prompt(message))) {
    e.preventDefault();
  }
}, false);

Summary

Types

safe()

Guaranteed to be safe

unsafe()

May be safe or unsafe (i.e. it needs to be converted)

Functions

attributes_escape(attrs)

Escapes an enumerable of attributes, returning iodata.

html_escape(safe)

Escapes the HTML entities in the given term, returning safe iodata.

javascript_escape(data)

Escapes HTML content to be inserted a JavaScript string.

raw(value)

Marks the given content as raw.

safe_to_string(arg)

Converts a safe result into a string.

Types

safe()

@type safe() :: {:safe, iodata()}

Guaranteed to be safe

unsafe()

@type unsafe() :: Phoenix.HTML.Safe.t()

May be safe or unsafe (i.e. it needs to be converted)

Functions

attributes_escape(attrs)

Escapes an enumerable of attributes, returning iodata.

The attributes are rendered in the given order. Note if a map is given, the key ordering is not guaranteed.

The keys and values can be of any shape, as long as they implement the Phoenix.HTML.Safe protocol. In addition, if the key is an atom, it will be "dasherized". In other words, :phx_value_id will be converted to phx-value-id.

Furthermore, the following attributes provide behaviour:

:aria, :data, and :phx - they accept a keyword list as value. data: [confirm: "are you sure?"] is converted to data-confirm="are you sure?".
:class - it accepts a list of classes as argument. Each element in the list is separated by space. nil and false elements are discarded. class: ["foo", nil, "bar"] then becomes class="foo bar".
:id - it is validated raise if a number is given as ID, which is not allowed by the HTML spec and leads to unpredictable behaviour.

Examples

iex> safe_to_string attributes_escape(title: "the title", id: "the id", selected: true)
" title=\"the title\" id=\"the id\" selected"

iex> safe_to_string attributes_escape(%{data: [confirm: "Are you sure?"]})
" data-confirm=\"Are you sure?\""

iex> safe_to_string attributes_escape(%{phx: [value: [foo: "bar"]]})
" phx-value-foo=\"bar\""

html_escape(safe)

@spec html_escape(unsafe()) :: safe()

Escapes the HTML entities in the given term, returning safe iodata.

iex> html_escape("<hello>")
{:safe, [[[] | "&lt;"], "hello" | "&gt;"]}

iex> html_escape('<hello>')
{:safe, ["&lt;", 104, 101, 108, 108, 111, "&gt;"]}

iex> html_escape(1)
{:safe, "1"}

iex> html_escape({:safe, "<hello>"})
{:safe, "<hello>"}

javascript_escape(data)

@spec javascript_escape(binary()) :: binary()

@spec javascript_escape(safe()) :: safe()

Escapes HTML content to be inserted a JavaScript string.

This function is useful in JavaScript responses when there is a need to escape HTML rendered from other templates, like in the following:

$("#container").append("<%= javascript_escape(render("post.html", post: @post)) %>");

It escapes quotes (double and single), double backslashes and others.

raw(value)

@spec raw(iodata() | safe() | nil) :: safe()

Marks the given content as raw.

This means any HTML code inside the given string won't be escaped.

iex> raw("<hello>")
{:safe, "<hello>"}
iex> raw({:safe, "<hello>"})
{:safe, "<hello>"}
iex> raw(nil)
{:safe, ""}

safe_to_string(arg)

@spec safe_to_string(safe()) :: String.t()

Converts a safe result into a string.

Fails if the result is not safe. In such cases, you can invoke html_escape/1 or raw/1 accordingly before.

You can combine html_escape/1 and safe_to_string/1 to convert a data structure to a escaped string:

data |> html_escape() |> safe_to_string()