<br/> XML literal in code

[ivan.zderadicka]

Hi,

once I've learned how used XML literals in code segments in templates I enjoyed them (although the code looks like real mess :-).
Now strange thing happens - I've all different XML tags in the code , but for some strange reason reason I cannot get there <br/> tag.

<p>
"Bla"
<br/>
"Bla"
</p>

gives this error: pre, line 3, column 4: invalid XmlNode

and

<p>
"Bla"
<br></br>
"Bla"
</p>

gives other error: pre, line 3, column 5: invalid Primary.

I'm on Lyons - what could be wrong?

[rberinger]

Hi,

once I've learned how used XML literals in code segments in templates I enjoyed them (although the code looks like real mess :-).
Now strange thing happens - I've all different XML tags in the code , but for some strange reason reason I cannot get there <br/> tag.

<p>
"Bla"
<br/>
"Bla"
</p>

gives this error: pre, line 3, column 4: invalid XmlNode

and

<p>
"Bla"
<br></br>
"Bla"
</p>

gives other error: pre, line 3, column 5: invalid Primary.

I'm on Lyons - what could be wrong?

Try terminating the string lines (that are not valid xml nodes with the semi-colon ";" like this.

<p>
"Bla";
<br></br>
"Bla";
</p>

[neilw]

Rberinger is of course correct; I'll just add that the literal <br /> works fine (I use it all the time), as long as you get the semicolons straight. This is a pitfall I plan to cover in the Beginner's Guide to Dekiscript.

Here's how to think about XML literals correctly, to avoid problems in the future:
1) Nothing has changed the fact that your script is a series of statements or expressions separate by semicolons. XML literals just happen to be fancy expressions that can have additional embedded DekiScript.
2) The contents of an XML literal element must be valid DekiScript. Therefore, if you have

<p>
"Blah"
<br />
"Blah"
</p>

Then the contents of the <p> literal is really the following script:

"Blah" <br /> "Blah"

This clearly is not valid; you can never have a series of values separated by spaces. By inserting the semicolons, you're turning it into a series of statements, each returning a single value. That's a valid script.

I'm still working on the best way to convey this clearly; what I've given you here is representative of my current thinking. Please let me know if this gives you any useful insight.

[SteveB]

To add to rberinger's and neilw's explanations, you can only omit the semi-colon ( on the very last statement of a code block.
For example:

{{ a; b; c }}

We allowed the omission of the semi-colon in some cases to make the trivial case easier, namely {{ a }}. Unfortunately, it also leads to confusion when and where you can omit them.