What's the easiest way to escape HTML rich text syntax in Unity?

User670 0
Viewed 22

Unity texts have that feature where certain HTML-style tags can be used to format text, like <b></b> for bold and <color=#ff0000></color> for colored text. Sometimes I see some Unity games display user-provided text (like a nickname or a chat message) and they are not escaped, which means the formatting tags get applied if the user types in those tags. Asking for those devs (I don't dev myself), what's the best/easiest way to escape those tags? Are there built-in functions for that, or should they write/import a new function?

Edit: Yes I did look up "C# HTML escaping" and found a function that escapes < into &lt;, but Unity doesn't render &lt; as < and I got &lt;color=#ff0000&gt; nonsense in the Unity scene. Yes I do realize there is a tick box that disables rich text but there is also a use case where, for example, you actually want to use user-provided text within a rich text context.

escaping unity3d
1 Answers

Both Text and TMP_Text (TextMeshPro and TextMeshProUGui) have according field Rich Text in the Inspector or via code it is Text.supportRichtText and TMP_Text.richText. By default they come enabled.

Yes I do realize there is a tick box that disables rich text but there is also a use case where, for example, you actually want to use user-provided text within a rich text context.

So quite simple

  • Enable this option in use cases where you want to allow that rich text tags change the format
  • Disable this option if you do not want it.

As said you can even switch this on runtime via code when needed.

If you want to further prevent your users from being able to putting certain symbols into input fields at all use the according input type and input validation settings (see e.g. InputField)

derHugo0
Related