From: sutch <dsutch@...>
Date: 2006-07-25T10:30:11+09:00
Subject: Re: htmltools incorrectly parsing HTML containing server-side tags

William James wrote:
> dsutch@gmail.com wrote:
> > I'm using HTML Tools 1.09 to parse HTML that contains tags that are to
> > be processed by the web server.  For example, here's an image tag:
> >
> > <img src="<$DCGallery$>Separators/gtabseps.gif" alt="this is a
> > seperator">
>
> Is this valid html?

Thank you for this information.  I did a bit more research and now
believe that this is not valid HTML.  Read on...

>  From another thread:
>
> > $ echo '<bar quux="foo>bar" />' | xmllint -
> > <?xml version="1.0"?>
> > <bar quux="foo&gt;bar"/>
> >
> > However, '<' needs to be escaped:
> >
> > $ echo '<bar quux="foo<bar" />' | xmllint -
> > -:1: parser error : Unescaped '<' not allowed in attributes values
> > <bar quux="foo<bar" />

Unfortunately, escaping is not an option since the HTML files that are
being parsed are being output from another closed system.

The question is: can HTML Tools be told to ignore "<" and ">" inside of
attribute values?  Or is there another HTML parser for Ruby that would
handle this?

Alternatively, is there some method for finding these characters within
attribute values and escaping them before parsing by Ruby and then
un-escaping them after parsing (so that the server can perform the
required processing of these PHP-like tags).