So I noticed that a piece of Javascript on my VisualForce page was working in some cases, and wasn't in others. JS was doing some operations on a textArea field from one of the custom objects we have. I realized that JS was breaking whenever that textArea field had a new line or carriage return character in it (\n and \r).

So I ended up using a replaceAll() method in the page controller, and removing all of those characters from that textArea field on page load. By the time it got to JS, it was a legal string.

on the VF PAGE:

<script language="JavaScript">
function someFunction() {
    var leftOver = 220;           

    if('{!shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c}'.length > 0){
        leftOver -= '{!shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c}'.length;
    }                                             
}            
</script>

in the controller:

//a fix for the text area field - '\n' and '\r' breaks JS on the VF page        
shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c = shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c.replaceAll('\r\n', ' ');

Posting this as a heads up for anyone who encounters JS working for some records and not for others.

If you have insight on why it breaks, do tell.

So I noticed that a piece of Javascript on my VisualForce page was working in some cases, and wasn't in others. JS was doing some operations on a textArea field from one of the custom objects we have. I realized that JS was breaking whenever that textArea field had a new line or carriage return character in it (\n and \r).

So I ended up using a replaceAll() method in the page controller, and removing all of those characters from that textArea field on page load. By the time it got to JS, it was a legal string.

on the VF PAGE:

<script language="JavaScript">
function someFunction() {
    var leftOver = 220;           

    if('{!shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c}'.length > 0){
        leftOver -= '{!shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c}'.length;
    }                                             
}            
</script>

in the controller:

//a fix for the text area field - '\n' and '\r' breaks JS on the VF page        
shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c = shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c.replaceAll('\r\n', ' ');

Posting this as a heads up for anyone who encounters JS working for some records and not for others.

If you have insight on why it breaks, do tell.

• javascript
• salesforce
• visualforce

2 Answers 2

Visualforce has a function called JSENCODE for encoding text and merge field values for use in JavaScript. This function should work for line breaks too.

Visualforce page javascript:

var jsSafeText = "{!JSENCODE(mergeField)}";

It's breaking because JavaScript doesn't allow literal line breaks in strings. This would probably fix it while allowing the line breaks:

public String getDeliveryRequirements() { 
    return shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c.replace('\r\n', '\\r\\n');
}

Then in the VF page, bind to the getter from above:

if('{!DeliveryRequirements}'.length > 0){
    leftOver -= '{!DeliveryRequirements}'.length;
}     

Update:

manubkk's answer is better. But I think the correct javascript syntax would be:

var deliveryRequirements = "{!JSENCODE(shippingAddress.Delivery_Requirements__c)}";