I'm trying to return an HTML string out from a function in my JavaScript code, but on the console I get the error "Uncaught syntax error: invalid or unexpected token" with the following code

function formatPrize (prize) {
    return (
     /*Unexpected token here*/ '<div class = "wrapper">
            <div class = "card radius shadowDepth1">
                <div class ="card__image border-tlr-radius">
                    <img src = "admin/"'+prize.sponsorLogo+'"> alt = "image" class = "border-tlr-radius">
                </div>

                <div class = "card_content card_padding">
                    <div class = "card_meta">
                        <h3>"'+prize.name+'"</h3>
                    </div>

                    <article class = "card__article">
                        Test message
                    </article>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>'
    );
}

I basically replaced some other piece of code that was here before and worked:

"<tr>" +
    "<td>" + prize.name + "</td>" +
    "<td>$" + prize.value + "</td>" +
    "<td>" + prize.description + "</td>" +
"</tr>"

Did I did something wrong when replacing that? How can I fix it?

I'm trying to return an HTML string out from a function in my JavaScript code, but on the console I get the error "Uncaught syntax error: invalid or unexpected token" with the following code

function formatPrize (prize) {
    return (
     /*Unexpected token here*/ '<div class = "wrapper">
            <div class = "card radius shadowDepth1">
                <div class ="card__image border-tlr-radius">
                    <img src = "admin/"'+prize.sponsorLogo+'"> alt = "image" class = "border-tlr-radius">
                </div>

                <div class = "card_content card_padding">
                    <div class = "card_meta">
                        <h3>"'+prize.name+'"</h3>
                    </div>

                    <article class = "card__article">
                        Test message
                    </article>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>'
    );
}

I basically replaced some other piece of code that was here before and worked:

"<tr>" +
    "<td>" + prize.name + "</td>" +
    "<td>$" + prize.value + "</td>" +
    "<td>" + prize.description + "</td>" +
"</tr>"

Did I did something wrong when replacing that? How can I fix it?

• javascript
• string
• token
• multiline

3 Answers 3

The problem is that single quotes and double quotes cannot create multiline strings in JavaScript.

As an alternative, either make each line a separate string and concatenate them, or do the following:

To have a multiline string, you need to replace the single quotes (') with a backtick (`) in JavaScript — this may be causing the error.

^{As @noazark pointed out, this may have limited patibility because it came with ES6, which is still relatively new.}

You can also escape the newline with a backslash at the end of each line.

See this SO answer for more details on the previous two methods.

You have to escape the newline character (with \) or concatenate multiple lines (both shown below).

function formatPrize (prize) {
return '<div class = "wrapper"> \
        <div class = "card radius shadowDepth1"> \
            <div class ="card__image border-tlr-radius"> \
                <img src = "admin/"'+prize.sponsorLogo+'"> alt = "image" class = "border-tlr-radius"> \
            </div>' +
            '<div class = "card_content card_padding">\n' +
                '<div class = "card_meta">\n' +
                    '<h3>"'+prize.name+'"</h3>\n' +
                '</div>\n' +
                ' \n' +
                '<article class = "card__article"> \
                    Test message \
                </article> \
            </div> \
        </div> \
    </div>';
}

Unfortunately most browsers do not support multi-line strings in javascript. You can do something like this though:

[
  "<tr>",
      "<td>" + prize.name + "</td>",
      "<td>$" + prize.value + "</td>",
      "<td>" + prize.description + "</td>",
  "</tr>"
].join('')

Edit The original version you provided works because the + operator looks for the next string, and since JavaScript is not whitespace sensitive, you can place it on the next line without any issues. So specifically your change was replacing the addition sign (string concatenation) with a multi-line string (which is not supported).