How to properly escape double quotes in jquery

Question

update: by deleting the space between the comma, I successfully got rid of one of the random equal signs/"s. However, it seems to be inserting " ="" " whenever there is a space in the string, which the user name returns(firstName lastName). Any idea why it would be doing that? And it also still inserts " ="" " right before ">join...", which is strange considering there is no space there.....

 $("#ride").append('<div class= "style"><img src = "'
                 + snapshot.val().id
                 + '" style="width:68px;height:68px;"/><p>' 
                 + snapshot.val().user 
                 + '</p><ul class = "styling"><li>'  
                 + snapshot.val().when 
                 + ' '
                 + snapshot.val().from 
                 + ' - ' 
                 + snapshot.val().to 
                 + '</li><li>' 
                 + snapshot.val().comments 
                 + '</li><button type="button" class="btn btn-outline-info" onclick = "initMessenger(\"'  
                 + snapshot.val().user
                 + '\",\"'
                 + snapshot.val().reference 
                 + '\")\">join this ride</button></ul></div>');

I'm using jquery to write dynamic HTML content.

data.forEach(function(snapshot) {
     $("#ride").append('<div class= "style"><img src = "'
                 + snapshot.val().id
                 + '" style="width:68px;height:68px;"/><p>' 
                 + snapshot.val().user 
                 + '</p><ul class = "styling"><li>'  
                 + snapshot.val().when 
                 + ' '
                 + snapshot.val().from 
                 + ' - ' 
                 + snapshot.val().to 
                 + '</li><li>' 
                 + snapshot.val().comments 
                 + '</li><button type="button" class="btn btn-outline-info" onclick = "initMessenger(\"' 
                 + snapshot.val().user 
                 + '\" , \"'
                 + snapshot.val().reference 
                 + '\")">join this ride</button></ul></div>');
             });

        console.log('ID : ' + $("#ride").html());
});

These are the divs created by my jquery code. Currently, I get a "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token }" message when I click either of the buttons in this div:

   <div class="style"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XdUIqdMkCWA/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/4252rscbv5M/photo.jpg" style="width:68px;height:68px;">
    <p>Liz</p>
    <ul class="styling">
        <li>Wed Mar 29 2017 07:00 AM - 09:00 PM</li>
        <li>test 2 </li><button type="button" class="btn btn-outline-info" onclick="initMessenger(" liz="" smith "=" " ,=" " "-kfsqld0eras9ri4v9es ")"="">join this ride</button></ul>
</div>
<div class="style"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XdUIqdMkCWA/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/4252rscbv5M/photo.jpg" style="width:68px;height:68px;">
    <p>Liz</p>
    <ul class="styling">
        <li>Thu Mar 23 2017 02:00 AM - 05:30 AM</li>
        <li>TEST THREE</li><button type="button" class="btn btn-outline-info" onclick="initMessenger(" liz="" smith "=" " ,=" " "-kfsvhs6q-x-bdhz8jfk ")"="">join this ride</button></ul>
</div>

Why does my initMessenger call all these random equal signs everywhere and added quotation marks? How do I get rid of them?

Answer 1

To avoid the escape nightmare one might use new ES6 Template literals

Like so

$("#ride").append(`
<div class="style">
    <img src="${snapshot.val().id}" style="width:68px;height:68px;"/>
    <p>${snapshot.val().user}</p>
    <ul class="styling">
    <li>${snapshot.val().when} ${snapshot.val().from} - ${snapshot.val().to}</li>
    <li>snapshot.val().comments</li>
    <button type="button" class="btn btn-outline-info" onclick="initMessenger('${snapshot.val().user}','${snapshot.val().reference}')">join this ride</button>
    </ul>
</div>`);

Now there's no need to escape any characters, see for instance: onclick="initMessenger('${snapshot.val().user}','${snapshot.val().reference}')"