CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcoldfusionlucee
Brian Fleishman
Brian Fleishman

Reputation: 1257

Submitting a form in ColdFusion that has special characters

I have a form that contains textboxes and textareas with user entered data. I am using a simple ColdFusion actionpage with a cfquery tag to submit the data to my database.

<cfquery name="add_ticket" datasource="#datasource#">
INSERT INTO service_ticket(end_user, customer_id, ticket_id, company_name, service_description, service_date, status, customer_signature, technician_signature, materials, ticket_type, equipment, discount, percent_discount, material_subtotal, material_tax, material_shipping, material_total, billable_service_total, tax_rate, grand_total, equipment_id, equipment_name)
VALUES("", '#get_customer.customer_id#', "#ticketnum#", "#url.customer_name#", "#url.description# - #get_equipment.equipment_name#", #CreateODBCDateTime(Now())#, "In-progress", "0", "0", "0", "#url.TT#", "0",  '0.00', '0', '0.00', '6.625', '0.00', '0.00', '0.00', '#subscriber.tax_rate#', '0.00', "#get_equipment.id#", "#get_equipment.equipment_name#")    
</cfquery>

I sporadically run into errors submitting this query because the values for certain columns contain special characters.

For instance, the value for company_name might be: Smith & Johnson, LLC.

The ColdFusion code breaks once it hits the ampersand. I've tried enclosing the value in single quotes and double quotes as well as

<cfqueryparam value="#url.company_name#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_longvarchar" />

but nothing seems to help.

Is there a better way to handle this situation?

I'm currently running a Lucee server.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 218

Answers (2)

user12031119
user12031119

Reputation: 1228

After reading your comment I now understand what the issue is. The solution to your problem is to use the ColdFusion function encodeForURL() when calling your action page using javascript.

Change your code from

window.open(href='actionpages/add_ticket_maintenance.cfm?TT=commercial&equipment_id=#id#&customer_name=#customer_name#&description=Equipment Maintenance&end_user=Scheduled maintenance', "_self");

to

window.open(href='actionpages/add_ticket_maintenance.cfm?TT=commercial&equipment_id=#id#&customer_name=#encodeForURL(customer_name)#&description=Equipment Maintenance&end_user=Scheduled maintenance', "_self");

Upvotes: 2

Dan Bracuk
Dan Bracuk

Reputation: 20804

You have options.

You can change your form to something like this:

<form action = actionpages/add_ticket_maintenance.cfm
target = "_blank"
method = "post">

This will submit the form to a separate window or tab. On your action page you will have to use the form scope instead of the url scope.

Or, you can encode your url variables with the EncodeForUrl function. Your choice.

Upvotes: 2

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