WebGetPostData converts characters to HTML
Paul Timms
2-2-24
Operating system: macOS
A change has been made to the function WebGetPostData between 8.5 2023-03-16 and 8.5 2024-01-27. In the latter version, it is encoding special characters in HTML, for example a quotation mark becomes ". Is this change by design or is it a bug? If it's by design, this is a major change that we need to consider when upgrading customer systems.

Note that WebGetRawPostData does not do any conversion of characters, so a workaround/fix is to change HAL code to use this instead.
2-22-24
Hi, have same problem. I have a temporary solution with HAL. But think is better to fix this in core.

procedure ReplaceWebStrings(var string tstr,var longint movcnt)
begin
integer i,l;

l = len(tstr);

movcnt = 0;
for (i = 0; i < l;i = i + 1) begin
movcnt = movcnt + 1;

if mid(tstr,i,4)=="<" then begin
tstr = left(tstr,i) & "<" & right(tstr,l-i-4);
l = l - 3;
movcnt = movcnt + 3;
end;
if mid(tstr,i,4)==">" then begin
tstr = left(tstr,i) & ">" & right(tstr,l-i-4);
l = l - 3;
movcnt = movcnt + 3;
end;
if mid(tstr,i,6)=="'" then begin
tstr = left(tstr,i) & "'" & right(tstr,l-i-6);
l = l - 5;
movcnt = movcnt + 5;

end;
if mid(tstr,i,6)==""" then begin
tstr = left(tstr,i) & "\"" & right(tstr,l-i-6);

l = l - 5;
movcnt = movcnt + 5;
end;
if movcnt>220 then begin
tstr = left(tstr,len(tstr)-(255-movcnt));
i = l;
end;
end;

return;
end;


global
procedure FixAreaWebStrings(var area FileArea)
begin
area newArea;
string 255 tstr;
longint asize,pos,movcnt;

SetAreaZeroSize(newArea);
asize = GetAreaLength(FileArea);

pos = 0;
while pos < asize begin
tstr = GetStringFromArea(FileArea,pos,255);
ReplaceWebStrings(tstr,movcnt);
pos = pos + movcnt;

if movcnt==0 then begin
pos = pos + 1;
end;
AddTextToArea(tstr,newArea);
end;
SetAreaZeroSize(FileArea);
InsertAreaBeforeArea(newArea,FileArea);
return;
end;

global webpublic procedure WebGetJSON()

begin
area reqst;
json jobj;


webgetpostdata(reqst);
FixAreaWebStrings(reqst);
jobj = parsejsonarea(reqst);

return;
end;
4-9-24
Hi Paul!

Thanks for your message! I'll forward this to our development for further investigation.

We will keep you posted in progress.
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