I've just encountered one of the weirdest CF problems I've ever seen, and even though I've found out how to stop it happening now, I'm still completely baffled, and wondering if anyone out there can shed some light on it.
It's happened in an intranet I'm developing, so all I can provide is screen grabs and code, but here goes... There's a form for adding a page to the intranet, and I'm using a slightly customised ezEdit to allow people to enter intro copy for the page. This is what the form looks like (screen grab): http://www.tengai.co.uk/test/tpintranet_OK.gif When it's submitted, the introCopy field contents are passed to a custom tag, act_markupSweep.cfm, which basically just gets rid of any 'dangerous' or non-compliant markup code that might have been entered. I ran into a problem with this tag when the user enters nothing. Certain Len() functions in the tag throw errors if it's passed a zero-length string, so I put this code in at the top of the tag: <cfif attributes.HTML EQ ""> <cfset caller.markupSweepResult=""> <cfexit> </cfif> Seemed pretty straightforward. Hah! If the form is submitted with something in introCopy, it works fine, and (if you've left out the required Title as well), displays the form again like this: http://www.tengai.co.uk/test/tpintranet_OK2.gif But, if you submit the form with *nothing* in the introCopy bit, this happens: http://www.tengai.co.uk/test/tpintranet_WEIRDERROR.gif That strange tangle of bits of source code continues off the right of the screen. And no, there are *no* CF errors hidden in the debug output off the bottom of the screen. It *looks* like a broken HTML tag. But check out the source code: http://www.tengai.co.uk/test/tpintranet_WEIRDERROR.zip If you run this through the W3C validator (http://makeashorterlink.com/?J11A6546), it balks at all the ezEdit stuff that's proprietary IE stuff, of course, but there's not a whiff of a broken tag. (The only change I made to the source is to cut out the CF debug output, which makes the Validator output way too long!) Even more bizarre, if I save the source out as a HTML document and place it in the root of the site (to get all the relative image links and so on), it looks like this: http://www.tengai.co.uk/test/tpintranet_WEIRDERROR2.gif This has got me and my colleague COMPLETELY MYSTIFIED. How can a page display broken like that, have its source saved out, and then display fine??!!! After much cursing and scratching of heads, I managed to stop the page display from breaking. How? I removed the <cfexit> tag from the act_markupSweep.cfm custom tag. I made it so it does this instead: <cfif attributes.HTML EQ ""> <cfset caller.markupSweepResult=""> <cfelse> [ normal tag processing ] </cfif> This works fine! Q: How can a <cfexit> tag running on the server affect how a browser renders a certain source file that's given to it? The only thing I can think of is some *really* obscure part of the HTTP header that's affected by the <cfexit> tag. This would explain why the page displays OK if you save the source out as static HTML and load that. As I said, I can turn this problem "on and off" in a reliable fashion by using or removing the <cfexit> tag, so I know how to solve the problem. I'm just too baffled to leave it be! (Maybe sign of an immature coder - not fully learnt to leave bugs behind if you can find the *solution* but not the *explanation*! ;) BTW, I've tried this in Netscape 6 - which gets given a plain textarea instead of ezEdit, so ezEdit has nothing to do with it. And the weird <style> and <script> comments are catch-alls that work in older browsers and XML browsers, I just used them habitually so I don't have to think about what comments to use each time. I've tried removing them, no difference. Anyone had this before?! - Gyrus ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] work: http://www.tengai.co.uk play: http://www.norlonto.net - PGP key available ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ______________________________________________________________________ Dedicated Windows 2000 Server PIII 800 / 256 MB RAM / 40 GB HD / 20 GB MO/XFER Instant Activation � $99/Month � Free Setup http://www.pennyhost.com/redirect.cfm?adcode=coldfusiona FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
