How can I show HTML snippets on a webpage without needing to replace each < with < and > with >?
In other words, is there a tag for don't render HTML until you hit the closing tag?
The tried and true method for HTML:
Replace the & character with &
Replace the < character with <
Replace the > character with >
Optionally surround your HTML sample with <pre> and/or <code> tags.
sample 1:
<pre>
This text has
been formatted using
the HTML pre tag. The brower should
display all white space
as it was entered.
</pre>
sample 2:
<pre>
<code>
My pre-formatted code
here.
</code>
</pre>
sample 3:
(If you are actually "quoting" a block of code, then the markup would be)
<blockquote>
<pre>
<code>
My pre-formatted "quoted" code here.
</code>
</pre>
</blockquote>
is there a tag for don't render HTML until you hit the closing tag?
No, there is not. In HTML proper, there’s no way short of escaping some characters:
& as &
< as <
(Incidentally, there is no need to escape > but people often do it for reasons of symmetry.)
And of course you should surround the resulting, escaped HTML code within <pre><code>…</code></pre> to (a) preserve whitespace and line breaks, and (b) mark it up as a code element.
All other solutions, such as wrapping your code into a <textarea> or the (deprecated) <xmp> element, will break.1
XHTML that is declared to the browser as XML (via the HTTP Content-Type header! — merely setting a DOCTYPE is not enough) could alternatively use a CDATA section:
<![CDATA[Your <code> here]]>
But this only works in XML, not in HTML, and even this isn’t a foolproof solution, since the code mustn’t contain the closing delimiter ]]>. So even in XML the simplest, most robust solution is via escaping.
1 Case in point:
textarea {border: none; width: 100%;}
<textarea readonly="readonly">
<p>Computer <textarea>says</textarea> <span>no.</span>
</textarea>
<xmp>
Computer <xmp>says</xmp> <span>no.</span>
</xmp>
Kind of a naive method to display code will be including it in a textarea and add disabled attribute so its not editable.
<textarea disabled> code </textarea>
Hope that help someone looking for an easy way to get stuff done.
But warning, this won't escape the tags for you, as you can see here (the following obviously does not work):
<textarea disabled>
This is the code to create a textarea:
<textarea></textarea>
</textarea>
Deprecated, but works in FF3 and IE8.
<xmp>
<b>bold</b><ul><li>list item</li></ul>
</xmp>
Recommended:
<pre><code>
code here, escape it yourself.
</code></pre>
i used <xmp> just like this :
http://jsfiddle.net/barnameha/hF985/1/
The deprecated <xmp> tag essentially does that but is no longer part of the XHTML spec. It should still work though in all current browsers.
Here's another idea, a hack/parlor trick, you could put the code in a textarea like so:
<textarea disabled="true" style="border: none;background-color:white;">
<p>test</p>
</textarea>
Putting angle brackets and code like this inside a text area is invalid HTML and will cause undefined behavior in different browsers. In Internet Explorer the HTML is interpreted, whereas Mozilla, Chrome and Safari leave it uninterpreted.
If you want it to be non-editable and look different then you could easily style it using CSS. The only issue would be that browsers will add that little drag handle in the bottom-right corner to resize the box. Or alternatively, try using an input tag instead.
The right way to inject code into your textarea is to use server side language like this PHP for example:
<textarea disabled="true" style="border: none;background-color:white;">
<?php echo '<p>test</p>'; ?>
</textarea>
Then it bypasses the html interpreter and puts uninterpreted text into the textarea consistently across all browsers.
Other than that, the only way is really to escape the code yourself if static HTML or using server-side methods such as .NET's HtmlEncode() if using such technology.
If your goal is to show a chunk of code that you're executing elsewhere on the same page, you can use textContent (it's pure-js and well supported: http://caniuse.com/#feat=textcontent)
<div id="myCode">
<p>
hello world
</p>
</div>
<div id="loadHere"></div>
document.getElementById("myCode").textContent = document.getElementById("loadHere").innerHTML;
To get multi-line formatting in the result, you need to set css style "white-space: pre;" on the target div, and write the lines individually using "\r\n" at the end of each.
Here's a demo: https://jsfiddle.net/wphps3od/
This method has an advantage over using textarea: Code wont be reformatted as it would in a textarea. (Things like are removed entirely in a textarea)
In HTML? No.
In XML/XHTML? You could use a CDATA block.
I assume:
you want to write 100% valid HTML5
you want to place the code snippet (almost) literal in the HTML
especially < should not need escaping
All your options are in this tree:
with HTML syntax
there are five kinds of elements
those called "normal elements" (like <p>)
can't have a literal <
it would be considered the start of the next tag or comment
void elements
they have no content
you could put your HTML in a data attribute (but this is true for all elements)
that would need JavaScript to move the data elsewhere
in double-quoted attributes, " and &thing; need escaping: " and &thing; respectively
raw text elements
<script> and <style> only
they are never rendered visible
but embedding your text in Javascript might be feasable
Javascript allows for multi-line strings with backticks
it could then be inserted dynamically
a literal </script is not allowed anywhere in <script>
escapable raw text elements
<textarea> and <title> only
<textarea> is a good candidate to wrap code in
it is totally legal to write </html> in there
not legal is the substring </textarea for obvious reasons
escape this special case with </textarea or similar
&thing; needs escaping: &thing;
foreign elements
elements from MathML and SVG namespaces
at least SVG allows embedding of HTML again...
and CDATA is allowed there, so it seems to have potential
with XML syntax
covered by Konrad's answer
Note: > never needs escaping. Not even in normal elements.
It's vey simple ....
Use this xmp code
<xmp id="container">
<xmp >
<p>a paragraph</p>
</xmp >
</xmp>
<textarea ><?php echo htmlentities($page_html); ?></textarea>
works fine for me..
"keeping in mind Alexander's suggestion, here is why I think this is a good approach"
if we just try plain <textarea> it may not always work since there may be closing textarea tags which may wrongly close the parent tag and display rest of the HTML source on the parent document, which would look awkward.
using htmlentities converts all applicable characters such as < > to HTML entities which eliminates any possibility of leaks.
There maybe benefits or shortcomings to this approach or a better way of achieving the same results, if so please comment as I would love to learn from them :)
This is a simple trick and I have tried it in Safari and Firefox
<code>
<span><</span>meta property="og:title" content="A very fine cuisine" /><br>
<span><</span>meta property="og:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.png" />
</code>
It will show like this:
You can see it live Here
You could try:
Hello! Here is some code:
<xmp>
<div id="hello">
</div>
</xmp>
This is a bit of a hack, but we can use something like:
body script {
display: block;
font-family: monospace;
white-space: pre;
}
<script type="text/html">
<h1>Hello World</h1>
<ul>
<li>Enjoy this dodgy hack,
<li>or don't!
</ul>
</script>
With that CSS, the browser will display scripts inside the body. It won’t attempt to execute this script, as it has an unknown type text/html. It’s not necessary to escape special characters inside a <script>, unless you want to include a closing </script> tag.
I’m using something like this to display executable JavaScript in the body of the page, for a sort of "literate progamming".
There’s some more info in this question When should tags be visible and why can they?.
function escapeHTML(string)
{
var pre = document.createElement('pre');
var text = document.createTextNode(string);
pre.appendChild(text);
return pre.innerHTML;
}//end escapeHTML
it will return the escaped Html
Ultimately the best (though annoying) answer is "escape the text".
There are however a lot of text editors -- or even stand-alone mini utilities -- that can do this automatically. So you never should have to escape it manually if you don't want to (Unless it's a mix of escaped and un-escaped code...)
Quick Google search shows me this one, for example: http://malektips.com/zzee-text-utility-html-escape-regular-expression.html
This is by far the best method for most situations:
<pre><code>
code here, escape it yourself.
</code></pre>
I would have up voted the first person who suggested it but I don't have reputation. I felt compelled to say something though for the sake of people trying to find answers on the Internet.
You could use a server side language like PHP to insert raw text:
<?php
$str = <<<EOD
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="description" content="Minimal HTML5">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML5,Minimal">
<title>This is the title</title>
<link rel='stylesheet.css' href='style.css'>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
EOD;
?>
then dump out the value of $str htmlencoded:
<div style="white-space: pre">
<?php echo htmlentities($str); ?>
</div>
There are a few ways to escape everything in HTML, none of them nice.
Or you could put in an iframe that loads a plain old text file.
Actually there is a way to do this. It has limitation (one), but is 100% standard, not deprecated (like xmp), and works.
And it's trivial. Here it is:
<div id="mydoc-src" style="display: none;">
LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo
<!--
YOUR CODE HERE.
<script src="WidgetsLib/all.js"></script>
^^ This is a text, no side effects trying to load it.
-->
LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo
</div>
Please let me explain. First of all, ordinary HTML comment does the job, to prevent whole block be interpreted. You can easily add in it any tags, all of them will be ignored. Ignored from interpretation, but still available via innerHTML! So what is left, is to get the contents, and filter the preceding and trailing comment tokens.
Except (remember - the limitation) you can't put there HTML comments inside, since (at least in my Chrome) nesting of them is not supported, and very first '-->' will end the show.
Well, it is a nasty little limitation, but in certain cases it's not a problem at all, if your text is free of HTML comments. And, it's easier to escape one construct, then a whole bunch of them.
Now, what is that weird LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo string? It's a random string, like a hash, unlikely to be used in the block, and used for? Here's the context, why I have used it. In my case, I took the contents of one DIV, then processed it with Showdown markdown, and then the output assigned into another div. The idea was, to write markdown inline in the HTML file, and just open in a browser and it would transform on the load on-the-fly. So, in my case, <!-- became transformed to <p><!--</p>, the comment properly escaped. It worked, but polluted the screen. So, to easily remove it with regex, the random string was used. Here's the code:
var converter = new showdown.Converter();
converter.setOption('simplifiedAutoLink', true);
converter.setOption('tables', true);
converter.setOption('tasklists', true);
var src = document.getElementById("mydoc-src");
var res = document.getElementById("mydoc-res");
res.innerHTML = converter.makeHtml(src.innerHTML)
.replace(/<p>.{0,10}LlNnlljn77fggggkk77csJJK8bbJBKJBkjjjjbbbJJLJLLJo.{0,10}<\/p>/g, "");
src.innerHTML = '';
And it works.
If somebody is interested, this article is written using this technique. Feel free to download, and look inside the HTML file.
It depends what you are using it for. Is it user input? Then use <textarea>, and escape everything. In my case, and probably it's your case too, I simply used comments, and it does the job.
If you don't use markdown, and just want to get it as is from a tag, then it's even simpler:
<div id="mydoc-src" style="display: none;">
<!--
YOUR CODE HERE.
<script src="WidgetsLib/all.js"></script>
^^ This is a text, no side effects trying to load it.
-->
</div>
and JavaScript code to get it:
var src = document.getElementById("mydoc-src");
var YOUR_CODE = src.innerHTML.replace(/(<!--|-->)/g, "");
This is how I did it:
$str = file_get_contents("my-code-file.php");
echo "<textarea disabled='true' style='border: none;background-color:white;'>";
echo $str;
echo "</textarea>";
It may not work in every situation, but placing code snippets inside of a textarea will display them as code.
You can style the textarea with CSS if you don't want it to look like an actual textarea.
If you are looking for a solution that works with frameworks.
const code = `
<div>
this will work in react
<div>
`
<pre>
<code>{code}</code>
</pre>
And you can give it a nice look with css:
pre code {
background-color: #eee;
border: 1px solid #999;
display: block;
padding: 20px;
}
JavaScript string literals can be used to write the HTML across multiple lines. Obviously, JavaScript, ECMA6 in particular, is required for this solution.
.createTextNode paired with CSS white-space: pre-wrap; does the trick.
.innerText alone also works. Run code snippet below.
let codeBlock = `
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to my page</h1>
<p>I like cars and lorries and have a big Jeep!</p>
<h2>Where I live</h2>
<p>I live in a small hut on a mountain!</p>
</body>
</html>
`
const codeElement = document.querySelector("#a");
let textNode = document.createTextNode(codeBlock);
codeElement.appendChild(textNode);
const divElement = document.querySelector("#b");
divElement.innerText = codeBlock;
#a {
white-space: pre-wrap;
}
<div id=a>
</div>
<div id=b>
</div>
//To show xml tags in table columns you will have to encode the tags first
function htmlEncode(value) {
//create a in-memory div, set it's inner text(which jQuery automatically encodes)
//then grab the encoded contents back out. The div never exists on the page.
return $('<div/>').text(value).html();
}
html = htmlEncode(html)
A combination of a couple answers that work together here:
function c(s) {
return s.split("<").join("<").split(">").join(">").split("&").join("&")
}
displayMe.innerHTML = ok.innerHTML;
console.log(
c(ok.innerHTML)
)
<textarea style="display:none" id="ok">
<script>
console.log("hello", 5&9);
</script>
</textarea>
<div id="displayMe">
</div>
I used this a long time ago and it did the trick for me, I hope it helps you too.
var preTag = document.querySelectorAll('pre');
console.log(preTag.innerHTML);
for (var i = 0; i < preTag.length; i++) {
var pattern = preTag[i].innerHTML;
pattern = pattern.replace(/</g, "<").replace(/>/g, ">");
console.log(pattern);
preTag[i].innerHTML = pattern;
}
<pre>
<p>example</p>
<span>more text</span>
</pre>
You can separate the tags by changing them to spans.
Like this:
<span><</span> <!-- opening bracket of h1 here -->
<span>h1></span> <!-- opening tag of h1 completed here -->
<span>hello</span> <!-- text to print -->
<span><</span> <!-- closing h1 tag's bracket here -->
<span>/h1></span> <!-- closing h1 tag ends here -->
And also, you can just only add the <(opening angle bracket) to the spans
<span><</span> <!-- opening bracket of h1 here -->
h1> <!-- opening tag of h1 completed here -->
hello <!-- text to print -->
<span><</span> <!-- closing h1 tag's bracket here -->
/h1><!-- closing h1 tag ends here -->
<code><?php $str='<';echo htmlentities($str);?></code>
I found this to be the easiest, fastest and most compact.
particleShape1.incandescencePP=<<rand(0.8.1),rand(0,0.5),rand(0,0.5); #rands are r,g,b, 1=100%.
I wanted the above line to read as is in a html document. Right now without any tags part of it disappears completely. Any ideas how I can get this to stay visible with the formatting I have on the document? Thanks!
You need to use pre tags:
<pre> particleShape1.incandescencePP=<<rand(0.8.1),rand(0,0.5),rand(0,0.5); #rands are r,g,b, 1=100%. </pre>
...replacing any < with < because they are still parsed with pre tags:
<pre> particleShape1.incandescencePP=<<rand(0.8.1),rand(0,0.5),rand(0,0.5); #rands are r,g,b, 1=100%. </pre>
http://jsfiddle.net/JDQRG/
Ever heard of pre tag. docs
It is used to show code inside html document.
This question already has answers here:
How to display raw HTML code on an HTML page
(30 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I know it is possible because this website does it, but I tried researching how and just got a bunch of junk, so how do I add tags to a website paragraph without the browser interpreting it as code.
For example, if I have <p><div></div></p>, I want the div to display in the browser as text not have the browser interpret it as html. Is this complicated to do?
I have been writing tutorials for school, and it would be much easier if I could add the code directly to the webpage in text form instead of images, so students can copy and paste it.
Look at how this website itself achieves this:
<p>For example, if I have <code><p><div></div></p></code>, I want the div to display in the browser as text not have the browser interpret it as html. Is this complicated to do?</p>
You need to replace the < and > with their HTML character entities.
There are many ways to use:
Replace < with <
`<h1>This is heading </small></h1>`
Place the code inside </xmp><xmp> tags
<xmp>
<ul>
<li>Coffee</li>
<li>Tea</li>
</ul>
</xmp>
I do not recommend other ways because they do not work on all browsers like <plaintext> or <listing>.
You want to look into something called HTML Entities.
If you want the < character to appear on a website, for example, you can write this HTML code: <. These are the five basic HTML Entities and their source code equivalents:
< <
> >
" "
' '
& &
If you are using a programming language (such as PHP or ASP.NET), then there is probably a built-in command that will do the conversion for you (htmlspecialchars() and Server.HtmlEncode, respectively).
Use the tag <PRE> before a block of reformatted text and </PRE> after.
The text between these tags is rendered as monospaced characters with line breaks and spaces at the same points as in the original file. This may be helpful for rendering poetry without adding a lot of HTML code. Try this:
Mary had a little lamb.
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went
the lamb was sure to go.
To add plain text code in a webpage, HTML Character Escaping is needed on five characters:
< as <> as >& as &' as '" as "
(OR)
<xmp> tag may also be used as an alternate, this tag disturbs the style and is obsolete.
<xmp>Code with HTML Tags like <div> etc. </xmp>
Use the html entity/special character of the tag, such as < (for less than)
<p> in html -> <p> in browser
You could also write <p> since there is no ambiguity about the opening tag.
Many languages have built in methods to convert HTML special characters such as php's htmlspecialchars
You need to escape the HTML tags, namely the less-than sign. Write it as < and it will appear as < on the HTML page.
Your html needs to not be in tags. If you use the <> tags you will have it converted into code not text, if I was to write <br> in the middle of a sentence then it would do this You will need to Write the code in code so to speak, using the < > (< >)
and then you get what you need.
I just discovered a much simpler solution at CSS-Tricks...
Just have your outer-most wrapper be a 'pre' tag, followed by a 'code' tag, then inside the code tag put your code in paranthesis.
The simplest way to do it without having to reformat your text using entities is to use JQuery.
<div id="container"></div>
<script>
$('#container').text("<div><h1>Hello!</h1><p>I like you.</p></div>");
</script>
If you then do alert($('#container').prop('innerHTML'));, you get <div><h1>Hello!</h1><p>I like you.</p></div>
How useful that technique is depends somewhat on where your material is coming from.
Use iframe and txt file:
<iframe src="html.txt"></iframe>
I'm using <code> tag inside of a <pre> tag to show code on my blogger blog. Unfortunately it doesn't work with HTML tags. Is there any way to show "<div>" inside of <pre> or <code> tag without actually interpreting it as HTML? This is what I do right now:
<pre>
<code>
.class {
color:red;
}
// I would like HTML code inside this
</code>
</pre>
Which works ok for everything except HTML. Any idea how to achieve this? Thanks.
Unfortunately it doesn't work with HTML tags.
<code> means "This is code", <pre> means "White space in this markup is significant". Neither means "The content of this element should not be treated as HTML", so both work perfectly, even if they don't mean what you want them to mean.
Is there any way to show "<div>" inside of <pre> or <code> tag without actually interpreting it as HTML?
If you want to render a < character then use <, with > for > and & for &.
You can't (in modern HTML) write markup and have it be interpreted as text.
It seems like a readonly textarea does pretty much what you want.
<textarea readonly> <!-- html code --> </textarea>
You can use the "xmp" element. The <xmp></xmp> has been in HTML since the beginning and is supported by all browsers. Even it should not be used, it is broadly supported.
Everything inside <xmp></xmp> is taken as it is (no markup lke tags or character references is recognized there) except, for apparent reason, the end tag of the element itself.
Otherwise "xmp" is rendered like "pre".
Try:
<xmp></xmp>
for exemple:
<pre>
<xmp><!-- your html code --></xmp>
</pre>
bye
Just escape the HTML tags. For example -
Replace < with <
Replace > with >
Complete lookup here
This can be easily achieved with a little bit of javascript.
document.querySelectorAll("code").forEach(el => el.innerText = el.innerHTML);
Run snippet below to see it in action:
document.querySelectorAll("code").forEach(el => el.innerText = el.innerHTML);
pre {
padding: 1rem;
background-color: #eee;
border-radius: 0.25rem;
}
<pre>
<code>
.class {
color:red;
}
// I would like HTML code inside this
<h1>Hello this is a heading</h1>
</code>
</pre>
Try CodeMirror (https://codemirror.net/)
It's a lightweight library that styles code in HTML. Here's a screenshot of what I'm referring to:
Worked well for us!
<pre>
<code><textarea>
<div>Now you can write Tags inside pre tag!</div>
</textarea><code>
<pre>
Not the best answer, but you could try to put a comment inside the tag like this:
<pre>
<code<!-->>
...
<<!-->/<!-->code>
</pre>
If you only need an opening tag, e.g <span>:
document.querySelectorAll('code').forEach(codeElement => {
codeElement.innerText = `<${codeElement.innerText}>`;
});
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Template_literals
Yes, with an escape xml function. You'll need to have jQuery enabled for it to work though.
<pre>
${fn:escapeXml('
<!-- all your code -->
')};
</pre>