XmlFormat

Description

Escapes special XML characters in a string, so that the string is safe to use with XML.

Return value

A copy of string that is safe to use with XML.

Syntax

XmlFormat(string)

History

New in ColdFusion MX: this function is new.

Parameters

Parameter Description

string
A string or a variable that contains one

Parameter	Description
string	A string or a variable that contains one

Usage

The characters that this function escapes include the following:

Greater than symbol (>)
Less than symbol (<)
Single quotation mark (')
Double quotation mark (")
Ampersand symbol (&)

Example

<h3>XMLFormat</h3>
<p>This example shows how XMLFormat is used to escape special 
XML characters and make the use of XML with ColdFusion easy.</p>
<XMP>
<?xml version = "1.0"?> 
<cfoutput>
<someXML>
  <someElement someAttribute = "#XMLFormat("'a quoted value'")#> 
    #XMLFormat(  "Body of element to be passed here.")#
  </someElement>
</someXML>  
</cfoutput>
</XMP>

Version 6

Comments are no longer accepted for ColdFusion MX. ColdFusion 8 is the current version.

Comments

AlanA said on Sep 21, 2004 at 2:06 PM :

XMLFormat function does not correctly escape illegal characters.

For example: When quering a db table with a field of TITLE....
<cfoutput query="GetArticles">
<item>
<title>#XMLFormat("Title")#</title>
</cfoutput>

The XMLFormat function does not correctly escape the high bit code " character and therefore the resulting XML will not vaildate.

Instead, the validator at http://www.feedvalidator.org/ responds:

Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII"
line 42, column 9: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x93 in position 1344: unexpected code byte (maybe a high-bit character?)

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Current page: http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/6/CFML_Reference/functions-pt2120.htm