Preserved Topic: I tell ya' there's sum'in to this UBB hooplah..

I bring this up in this forum because it's not a coding issue as much as it is an ethical one:

Would it be considered bad form to support UBB code in a script I'm writing and to make ammendments to it as I see fit?


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[This message has been edited by Petskull (edited 06-23-2002).]

I doubt it. Every UBB-wannabe forum does it.

Slime: Doesn't the Aslylum?

Not that I've seen....bu then again. I couldn't say even if I had seen it with my own eyes. All I know is that no knew UBB code has been added in the two and a half years I've been interred here.

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Well, I meant that every forum made to look like UBB copies the code. I don't know that they necessarily *add* to it.

You know what I'd recommend? Let them use specific HTML tags, like real HTML, such as

<a href="...">...</a>

What you'd want to do if you do that, is
1. check for those specific tags and re-implement them. (meaning, extract the important information, the URL and the text in the <a> case, and then re-make the tag.) Re-implementing the tags instead of just copying what the user puts inside them keeps things safe; for instance, it would prevent me from using onclick="" or whatever inside an <a> tag.
2. Make sure there aren't any javascript: URLs by restricting the things that a URL is allowed to start with (such as http://, news://, ftp://, and maybe some others).
3. replace any < or >'s in the text with &amp;lt; and &amp;gt;
4. replace any ampersands in the text with &amp;amp;

And that should keep things safe.