How to prevent thymeleaf from replacing special characters in HTML attribute values?

Question

I'am using Thymeleaf in combination with a js micro-templating routine, which result in special characters in attribute values. When running Thymeleaf on

<a style="display:<%= x ? 'block' : 'none' %>;">

it creates

<a style="display:&lt;%= x ? &#39;block&#39; : &#39;none&#39; %&gt;;">

while I would expect to get exactly the same I put into the processor. How do I use special characters in HTML attribute values? Many thanks!

Answer 1

Try to play with

th:utext="#{unescaped text}"> 

See Thymeleaf doc Unescaped Text

Answer 2

There is some variants to review:

• use LEGACYHTML5 option in templateResolver as mentioned above
• override template method in Underscore.js

I prefer second approach. Place this code in your initialization script:

var original = _.template;
_.template = function(content) {
    // fix operators escaped by Thymeleaf HTML5 validator
    content = content.replace(/'/g, "'");
    content = content.replace(/&lt;/g, "<");
    content = content.replace(/&gt;/g, ">");
    return original.call(this, content);
};