What does 'h' do?

Rails
1

I’m sure a real newbie question, but try searching for ‘h’ in any search
engine and you don’t get far.

I am wondering what the h does in Ruby as in the code below:

<%= h(truncate(product.description, 80)) %>

2

On 12/29/05, Mark D. [email protected] wrote:

I’m sure a real newbie question, but try searching for ‘h’ in any search
engine and you don’t get far.

I am wondering what the h does in Ruby as in the code below:

<%= h(truncate(product.description, 80)) %>

h() is shorthand for ‘html_escape’, which makes sure the content is
safe for display on an HTML page.

For example, if your controller had some code in it like:
@example = “


”

<%= @example %> in a view would put three breaks in a row, when what
you probably wanted was to display the actual text.

<%= h(@example) %> converts those brackets into HTML entities that
will show up properly.

In general, it’s a good idea to use it whenever you don’t have total
control over the content, because it will prevent your pages from
melting.

3

Alias for html_escape(). Docs for ERb are here:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/erb/rdoc/classes/ERB/Util.html

4

Jeremy M. wrote:

Alias for html_escape(). Docs for ERb are here:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/erb/rdoc/classes/ERB/Util.html

Thanks for the response and the resource (in the process of learning…)

I figured it was something like that, I just wanted to be sure.