OTN Discussion Forums : strange things happening: broken html ...

Kaja Trees

Posts: 156
Registered: 03/23/04

strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 5, 2006 8:07 AM

Hi

One of my clients has a problem with sporadically appearing broken html in their ApEx application. They have version 2.2 of ApEx. Sometimes just a few symbols are missing, though most of the source is ok. It appears and disappears without any reason known, but once it happens on a page, it will be there for some time (reproducible for some days), but finally disappears again. The appearing/disappearing might be from editing the application - they are currently programming their application. At first I thought they had altered their Page Template in some way (they use default ApEx Theme 2 that is practically unmodified - only javascript file include and some custom classes added) and demanded to see it - but it was ok. And then I saw it doesn't happen only in the Page Template part (they sent me example of how the end - </html> tag - had been stripped short into </ht, so the first thought was modified Page Template), but also in tables (on one page they showed me a report, which had </td><td> missing from the middle of table and also part of the text, that should have been displayed in the following column); in one report all but one edit icon displayed correctly.

Have you seen anything like this before? Where should I look next?
Just in case, I asked their code pages, because they might help to answer:
Application express UTF-8
Database WEISO8859P15

Thanks in advance,
Kaja

Chet Justice

Posts: 550
Registered: 01/23/02

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 5, 2006 9:42 AM

in response to: Kaja Trees

Reply

Kaja,

Are they by chance displaying text from a database column there?

I have had the same issue when displaying text entered into a text area form by end users. One (or more) of the characters they entered "broke" the html.

chet

Kaja Trees

Posts: 156
Registered: 03/23/04

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 5, 2006 10:13 PM

in response to: Chet Justice

Reply

Hi,

In the broken report table case they do indeed display data from column - but I verified, that this is pure textual value, no html in it, no special symbols like < or > (might be some estonian ä, ö, ü or õ, but I don't believe it could be a problem). But the bad data could only be reason for the report cases, it couldn't be the reason why a few symbols are missing from the end of the html document (the broken </html> and </body> tags). In that case the whole end of the html document is missing. For example on some pages the </body> tag is broken into </bo and then there is no </html> tag in the end, too.

Kaja

user534856

Posts: 5
Registered: 10/06/06

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 6, 2006 12:27 AM

in response to: Kaja Trees

Reply

HI Kaja,

i have the same problems with my select list. Everything works fine for 2 or 3 weeks but
now the html code is broken. Sometimes Apex forget to close the tags or in the tags are missing
spells. Does anyone knows what is wrong or what can i do ???

thx
Phil

Denes Kubicek

Posts: 4,839
Registered: 06/22/00

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 6, 2006 12:57 AM

in response to: user534856

Reply

I have seen a similar problem:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION out_string_fn

   RETURN VARCHAR2

IS

   CURSOR emp_cur

   IS

      SELECT ename

        FROM emp;



   v_string   VARCHAR2 (4000);

BEGIN

   FOR c IN emp_cur

   LOOP

      v_string :=

            v_string

         || '<span style="">'

         || c.ename

         || '</span>'

         || ', </br></br>';

   END LOOP;



   v_string := LTRIM (v_string, ', ');

   v_string := LTRIM (v_string, '</br></br>');

   v_string := RTRIM (v_string, '</br></br>');

   v_string := RTRIM (v_string, ', ');

   RETURN v_string;

END;

Running a query:

SELECT out_string_fn

  FROM DUAL

returns the following

  span style="">KING</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">BLAKE</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">CLARK</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">JONES</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">SCOTT</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">FORD</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">SMITH</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">WARD</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">MARTIN</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">TURNER</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">JAMES</span>, </br></br>

<span style="">MILLER</span>

Denes Kubicek

user534856

Posts: 5
Registered: 10/06/06

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 6, 2006 1:18 AM

in response to: Denes Kubicek

Reply

my problem looks like that:

source:

<option selected="selected" value="argentinisch">argentinisch</option>
<option value="brasilianisch">brasilianisch</option>
<option value="chinesisch">chinesisch</option>
<option value="dänisch">dänisch</option>
<option value="deutsch">deutsch</option>
<option value="deutsch, Österreich">deutsch, Österreich</option>
<option value="deutsch, Schweiz">deutsch, Schweiz</option>
<ption value="englisch">englisch</option>
<option value="englisch, Ägypten">englisch, Ägypten</option>
<option value="englisch, Australien">englisch, Australien</option>
<option value="englisch, Großbrtannien">englisch, Großbrtannien</option>
<optin value="englisch, Indien">englisch, Indien</option>
<option value="englisch, Kanada">englisch, Kanada</option>
<option value="englisch, Neuseeland">englisch, Neuseeland</option>
<option value="englisch, Singapur">englisch, Singapur</option>
<option value="englisch, Südafrika">englisch, Südafrika</option>
<option value="englisch, USA">englisch, USA</option>
<option value="estnisch">estnisch</option>
<option value="finnisch">finnisch</option>
<option value="französisch">französisch</option>
<option value="französisch, Belgien">französisch, Belgien</option>
<option value="französisch, Luxemburg">französisch, Luxemburg</option>
<option value="griechisch">griechisch</option>
<option value="italienisch">italienisch</option>
<option valu="kroatisch">kroatisch</option>
<option value="lettisch">lettisch</option>
<option value="litauisch">litauisch</option>
<option value="niederländisch">niederländisch</option>
<option value="niederländisch, Belgien">niederländisch, Belgien</option>
<option value="niederländisch, Luxemburg">niederländisch, Luxemburg</option>
<option value="norwegisch">norwegisch</option>
<option value="polnisch">polnisch</option>
<option value="portugiesisch">portugiesisch</option>
<option value="rumänisch">rumänisch</option>
<option value="russisch">russisch</option>
<option value="schwedisch">schwedisch</option>
<option value="slowakisch">slowakisch</option>
<option value="slowenisch">slowenisch</option>
<option value="spanisch">spanisch</option>
<option value="spanisch, Mexiko">spanisch, Mexiko</option>
<option value="Süd-Korea">Süd-Korea</option>
<option value="tschechisch">tschechisch</option>
<option value="türkisch">türkisch</option>
<option value="ungarisch">ungarisch</option>
</selec>

Does anybody know whether the new patch fix this problem ?? or have you already installed the patch ?? What can i do ??

thx Phil

Chet Justice

Posts: 550
Registered: 01/23/02

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Oct 6, 2006 6:59 AM

in response to: Kaja Trees

Reply

You should do a view source and paste that into an HTML editor (I use JDev). That will highlight any possible problems.

One thing that I have done is to pass the text entered into a textarea box and strip any "weird" characters. Users have a habit of cutting and pasting from Word. Here's a snippet from my strip_weird_characters function:

    l_text := REPLACE( p_text, CHR( 133 ), '...' );  --ELLIPSIS
    l_text := REPLACE( l_text, CHR( 147 ), '"' ); --DOUBLE QUOTE
    l_text := REPLACE( l_text, CHR( 148 ), '"' ); --DOUBLE QUOTE

chet

Deii

Posts: 17
Registered: 01/03/07

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Jan 3, 2007 6:28 AM

in response to: Kaja Trees

Reply

you must have properly defined NLS parameters

Deii

Posts: 17
Registered: 01/03/07

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Jan 3, 2007 7:50 AM

in response to: Deii

Reply

sorry, I was wrong
you must have properly defined (oracle embeded) webserver code page/encoding

Patrick Wolf

Posts: 1,812
Registered: 04/24/00

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Feb 25, 2007 3:50 AM

in response to: Deii

Reply

Anybody found a solution for that?

Because a user of my ApexLib Framework who is located in Norway has the same problem! And I have no real clue what to do.

Depending on the data which are displayed, some of the HTML code/JavaScript code which is below is destroyed.

Thanks
Patrick

Arie Geller

Posts: 3,368
Registered: 06/18/00

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Feb 25, 2007 4:13 AM

in response to: Patrick Wolf

Reply

Hello Patrick,

Problems with HTML output are typical to DB without the PL/SQL Web Toolkit patch. I would check it first.

Also, make sure they are using AL32UTF8 in the DAD.

Regards,
Arie.

Patrick Wolf

Posts: 1,812
Registered: 04/24/00

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Feb 25, 2007 9:19 AM

in response to: Arie Geller

Reply

Thanks Arie!

I also thought about something similar and just got the confirmation that after applying the patch everything works fine!

Thanks
Patrick

Arie Geller

Posts: 3,368
Registered: 06/18/00

Re: strange things happening: broken html in output
Posted: Feb 25, 2007 12:42 PM

in response to: Patrick Wolf

Reply

Hello Patrick,

I'm glad to hear everything is working well now.

It seems that this patch issue is not emphasized enough. One paragraph in the release notes – that most users tends to skip – seems not to do the work. Well, it will probably be solved with Oracle 11g

Regards,
Arie.