Convert to CDATA/XML?

[@lbutlr]

Is there a way to easily convert a block of HTML text with entities in, like & into CDATA XML-compatible codes like &?

The only thing I see in the manual for CDATA is

> • Escape <CDATA>: This option controls whether BBEdit should convert <![CDATA[]]> sections to normal text.

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[jj]

Hi @lbutlr,

One possible approach is with node.js and the node module html-entities.

Create a BBEdit Text Filter with this snippet into ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Text\ Filters/html_entities_to_xml_entities.js

        #!/usr/bin/env node
        const html_entities = require('html-entities');
        process.stdin.setEncoding('utf8');
        process.stdin.on('data', function(text) {
          let decoded = html_entities.decode(text);
          let reencoded = html_entities.encode(decoded, {mode: 'nonAsciiPrintable', level: 'xml'});
          process.stdout.write(reencoded);
        })

In case node.js is not already installed on your system:

        % brew install node
       
In case the node html-entities module in not already installed on your system:

        % npm install -g html-entities

HTH

Jean Jourdain

[@lbutlr]

On 2022 Jan 26, at 10:11, jj <goo...@mixio.com> wrote:
> One possible approach is with node.js and the node module html-entities.

Thanks, I was hoping for a simpler solution that didn't rely on something else to install and I will probably use htmlspecialchars() from php instead since that is currently in macOS (for now), and I am more comfortable with php anyway.

Thought there might be something in BBEdit (though I can use the text factory to call out to php).

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