Bug Tracker

#4091 closed bug (fixed)

Opened February 07, 2009 01:53PM UTC

Closed February 12, 2009 04:25AM UTC

Error in escaping selector

Reported by: soothsayer Owned by:
Priority: critical Milestone: 1.3.2
Component: unfiled Version: 1.3.1
Keywords: Cc:
Blocked by: Blocking:
Description

If you name a textbox with name="txtRating["

and then use a selector like $("input[name=txtRating\\\\[]")

it gives an error in Firefox only. Works fine on Chrome.

Firebug console reads:

[Exception... "'Syntax error, unrecognized expression: ]' when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]" nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)" location: "<unknown>" data: no]

I'm attaching along a sample code to reproduce the bug.

Attachments (1)
  • test.html (0.6 KB) - added by soothsayer February 07, 2009 01:54PM UTC.

    Sample Code

Change History (6)

Changed February 07, 2009 01:57PM UTC by soothsayer comment:1

Forgot to mention,

If I use $('input[name="txtRating["]') as my selector, it works fine on Firefox.

Changed February 11, 2009 06:35AM UTC by Rwhitbeck comment:2

Isn't this $('input[name="txtRating["]') the proper syntax anyways?

Is this even a bug?

Changed February 11, 2009 03:02PM UTC by soothsayer comment:3

Rwhitbeck: The syntax you are using is an alternative I suppose.

As quoted on http://docs.jquery.com/Selectors

Note: if you wish to use any of the meta-characters described above as a literal part of a name, you must escape the character with two backslashes (\\). For example:

#foo\\\\:bar

#foo\\\\[bar\\\\]

#foo\\\\.bar

More important, the point being that it should either work in all browsers or none. That's the essence of jquery as a robust & platform independent framework.

Let me know what you think

Changed February 11, 2009 04:42PM UTC by Rwhitbeck comment:4

Take a look at this page which more accurately describes what you are trying to do:

http://docs.jquery.com/Selectors/attributeEquals#attributevalue

Specifically the note for arguments value: "An attribute value. Quotes are optional in most cases, but should be used to avoid conflicts when the value contains characters like "]"."

I feel that the example you are giving isn't supported but is working anyways in some browsers.

Changed February 11, 2009 05:08PM UTC by soothsayer comment:5

Fair enough.

I think this must be brought to more highlight. Added it at the bottom of the http://docs.jquery.com/API/1.3/Selectors page now. Not many people know about this since I discussed this before on IRC, etc and no one could figure out.

Anyway, I really hope this behavior is standardized across browsers. Such a bug in codes would really take long to locate.

Cheers!

Changed February 12, 2009 04:25AM UTC by dmethvin comment:6

resolution: → fixed
status: new → closed

Since the documentation has been clarified that you should quote special characters, it doesn't seem like there is a lot we can do. Your edit on the Selectors page helps. Different browsers may not handle error cases the same way, but if the values are quoted everything works consistently.