NAME Dancer::Plugin::EscapeHTML - Escape HTML entities to avoid XSS vulnerabilities SYNOPSIS This plugin provides convenience keywords `escape_html' and `unescape_html' which are simply quick shortcuts to `encode_entities' and `decode_entities' from HTML::Entities. use Dancer::Plugin::EscapeHTML; my $encoded = escape_html($some_html); It also provides optional automatic escaping of all HTML (see below.) DESCRIPTION This plugin is intended to provide a quick and simple way to ensure that HTML passed in the tokens hashref to the template is safely escaped (encoded), thereby helping to avoid XSS/cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. You can encode specific bits of data yourself using the `escape_html' and `unescape_html' keywords, or you can enable automatic escaping of all values passed to the template. In a future version, it is likely that this automatic escaping can be bypassed for certain values - probably by providing parameter names/patterns in the configuration to indicate parameters which should be left alone. KEYWORDS When the plugin is loaded, the following keywords are exported to your app: escape_html Encodes HTML entities; shortcut to `encode_entities' from HTML::Entities unescape_html Decodes HTML entities; shortcut to `decode_entities' from HTML::Entities Automatic HTML encoding If desired, you can also enable automatic HTML encoding of all params passed to templates. To do so, enable the automatic_encoding option in your app's config - for instance, add the following to your `config.yml': plugins: EscapeHTML: automatic_escaping: 1 Now, all values passed to the template will be automatically encoded, so you should be protected from potential XSS vulnerabilities. Of course, this has the drawback that you cannot provide pre-prepared HTML in template params to be used "as is". You can get round this by using the `exclude_pattern' option to provide a pattern to match token names which should be exempted from automatic escaping - for example: plugins: EscapeHTML: automatic_escaping: 1 exclude_pattern: '_html$' The above would exclude token names ending in `_html' from being escaped. SEE ALSO Dancer HTML::Entities AUTHOR David Precious, `' LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright 2011 David Precious. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License. See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.