How to insert multi line string into coffeescript/jquery value with Rails

Question

I have some CoffeeScript in my Rails project, with which I'm trying to update a textarea. My CoffeeScript is:

$('#video_description').val(<%= @description %>")

The returned text is a string from the YT gem (a description from one of my YouTube videos). An example can be:

Testing that this works
Does this work?

When I load the page and inspect it with the Developer Tools in Chrome, the CoffeeScript looks like:

$('#video_description').val("Testing that this works
Does this work?")

The new line avoids the CoffeeScript from making sense to the interpreter, and it raises the following message:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token

I've tried replacing the CoffeeScript with:

$('#video_description').val(<%= h @description %>")

This has no effect (other than to escape all the single quotes in the actual string). It has something to do with the fact the string is dropped into the quotes as is.

I need to have the text string to have \n instead of the carriage return.

Any help to solve this would be great.

arieljuod · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-08 14:16:21Z

1

Use the escape_javascript() method (shortcut: j())

$('#video_description').val("<%= j(@description) %>");

answered Nov 8, 2018 at 14:16

arieljuod

16k2 gold badges27 silver badges37 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Darren Over a year ago

Thank you so much. Greatly appreciated. I had no idea that's what the j() meant.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to insert multi line string into coffeescript/jquery value with Rails

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related