How to preserving XML tag string formats in variables?

[Jim Ault]

On May 21, 2011, at 7:12 AM, Keith Clarke wrote:

> Hi folks,
> I'm experimenting with scripting the building of a POST message. So,  
> I'm creating a set of lines that take the form  
> "<opening_tag_string>" & tVariable & "</closing_tag_string>" and  
> using a repeat loop to build each component of each lines into a  
> variable tMessage.
>
> When I use 'add return & "opening–tag–string" & tVariable after  
> tMessage' to create a partial XML node statement, I get what I would  
> expect to see in the message box when I put tMessage.
>
> However, when I attempt to 'add return & "opening–tag–string" &  
> tVariable & "closing_tag_string" after tMessage' to create the full  
> statement, the opening and closing tag strings disappear and I'm  
> left with just the list of tVariable in tMessage.
>
> I guess there is some wrapping or encoding that I need to apply to  
> the tag strings to preserve them inside the variable, but I can't  
> seem to find anything in the docs or the lists - I'm obviously using  
> the wrong search terms.
>
> Any clues gratefully received.

You want to study the page in the dictionary
     HTMLtext

There are a limited number of tags that livecode recognizes and thus  
allows formatting of fields much like the early web pages.

The message box is simply a field in a stack, and
when debugging HTML and other code/encoded/decoded strings, the  
message box is a very poor tool.

Save yourself some headaches and put the text strings into a good text  
processor that won't automatically do things like change line endings  
from Unix to Windows, etc.  I use BBEdit, others use TextWrangler, and  
a search of the archives will show others.

Further caution is needed if using UTF8 or uinicode, since character  
sets across platforms, servers, and software packages can create hard- 
to-detect bugs.


Jim Ault
Las Vegas