Ruby unescape HTML string

Question

Any idea how I can unescape the following string in Ruby?

C&#x3a;&#x5c;inetpub&#x5c;wwwroot&#x5c;adminWeb

to

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\adminWeb

or to

C%3A%5Cinetpub%5Cwwwroot%5CadminWeb

Tried with URI.decode with no success.

Yu Hao · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-18 06:33:12Z

22

The CGI library is one option:

require 'cgi'

CGI.unescapeHTML('C&#x3a;&#x5c;inetpub&#x5c;wwwroot&#x5c;adminWeb')
# => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

answered Aug 18, 2015 at 6:33

Yu Hao

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Comments

goodniceweb · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-18 15:08:14Z

6

One more variant is HTMLEntities

HTMLEntities.new.decode "C&#x3a;&#x5c;inetpub&#x5c;wwwroot&#x5c;adminWeb"             
# => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

I prefer to use it because it deals with rare cases aså and — which CGI.unescapeHTML does not

answered Aug 18, 2015 at 15:08

goodniceweb

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Motine · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-23 11:10:19Z

1

An alternative is using the standard lib's URI module:

require 'uri'
URI.unescape "C%3A%5Cinetpub%5Cwwwroot%5CadminWeb" # => "C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\adminWeb"

EDIT This is answer is obsolete. Please check this thread.

answered Aug 18, 2015 at 8:23

Motine

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URI.unescape (now obsolete) will decode %-escaped characters in URLs. That's different from decoding HTML entities (&...;).