Storing HTML or XML code in javascript variables

Question

I\'d like to store a some HTML/XML markups in a javascript variable. The problem is that the text is relatively large. For example how can I store the following XML piece in a j

Answer 1

I assume your question is how to take that exact string, and not one you retrieve from a web service or Ajax call or the like. While this is a pretty bad idea for lots of reasons, to answer the question...

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There is no really good way of doing this in JavaScript. Some browsers support line continuation by placing a \ at the end of the line, so you would do something like:

var xml = '\
  \
    \
    ...';

But this is nonstandard, and in fact directly contradicts the JS spec:

A 'LineTerminator' character cannot appear in a string literal, even if preceded by a backslash.

The only really reliable way of doing this would be with manual string concatenation:

var xml = '' + "\n" +
'      ' + "\n" +
'        ' + "\n" +
'        ...';

You can make this a bit neater like so:

var xml = ['',
'      ',
'        '
'        ...'].join("\n");

But it still sucks.

Also, with all of these approaches, you would have to escape any single quotes, i.e. replace ' with \'. I didn't see any in your XML snippet at first glance though, which is good.