[ALOY-1209] Compile error when a view's attribute contains an escaped quote

GitHub Issue	n/a
Type	Bug
Priority	Medium
Status	Resolved
Resolution	Won't Fix
Resolution Date	2015-01-09T14:26:14.000+0000
Affected Version/s	n/a
Fix Version/s	Alloy 1.7.0
Components	XML
Labels	TCSupportTriage, alloy, compile, view
Reporter	Fokke Zandbergen
Assignee	Tim Poulsen
Created	2014-11-12T14:01:58.000+0000
Updated	2015-01-09T14:26:14.000+0000

Description

The following view:

<Alloy>
	<Window>
		<Label html="Hello <b>Bold</b> <font color=\"red\">World!</font>" />
	</Window>
</Alloy>

Will result in the following compile error:

[INFO]    view:       "index.xml"
[WARN]  attribute space is required"html"!!
[WARN]  @#[line:3,col:3]
[ERROR] Error parsing XML file.
[ERROR] element parse error: Error: attribute value must after "="
[ERROR] @#[line:3,col:3]
[ERROR] Alloy compiler failed

I'd expect this to work fine since the " is escaped?

Comments

Fokke Zandbergen 2015-01-09

Workaround by [~skypanther]:

    <Label html='Hello <b>Bold</b> <font color="red">World!</font>' />
    <Label html="Hello <b>Bold</b> <font color='red'>World!</font>" />

Fokke Zandbergen 2015-01-09

The correct way to escape (double) quotes in XML according to the [specification](http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#syntax) is to use " or use <![CDATA[ .. ]]> in a text node. I think with this argument this ticket can be closed as *Won't Fix*
Tim Poulsen 2015-01-09

Resolving per Fokke's comments. Escaped characters aren't supported in XML, we don't support CDATA blocks, and there's no reliable way to replace quotes (escaped or otherwise) in attribute values given the many possible permutations of strings developers might use. Additional workarounds would be to put the strings into the TSS or JS, or for quotes within HTML (not surrounding attributes as in the original problem description) would be to use entities like “

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