The DDR doesn't encode ampersands in style names (3 Comments)

Issue report by Nicholas Orr

Product

FileMaker Pro

Version

13.0v3

Operating system version

Mac OS 10.9.3

Description of the issue

When you have a layout object with a custom style name that contains an ampersand character, when you generate the DDR the ampersand won't be properly encoded and this will mean you have invalid XML that can't be used in other applications.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Create a new file with a layout object of any sort. Select the object in layout mode, and go to the styles tab of the inspector and choose "Save As New Style...". Give the style a name with an & character in it. Save the style and the layout and then generate the DDR.

Expected result

All & characters should be encoded as & in text nodes of XML.

Actual result

They aren't encoded and it fails to be able to be read because of validation issues in the XML.

Exact text of any error message(s) that appear

From xmllint :

error: EntityRef: expecting ';'

<Name>~module&nav_name_light</Name></CustomStyles>
^

Configuration information

I haven't checked if other characters cause this issue, or if there are other places where this also occurs. The exact specs are :

* Text Nodes- the string value, except all ampersands are
replaced by &amp;, all open angle brackets (<) are replaced by
&lt;, all closing angle brackets (>) are replaced by &gt;, and
all #xD characters are replaced by &#xD;.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3076.txt

Workaround

None available, as you can't do a search and replace on any unencoded characters without picking up ones that may be already encoded, so it's a fatal error.