htmlspecialchars error?

André_A
error ID: 1272856003

I was working with zotero [edit: within Firefox (not Openoffice)], opening and closing the zotero panel several times, when I realized the red icon with an exlamation mark. I clicked on it and it said:

Tag '<br />
<b>Warning</b>: htmlspecialchars() expects…' too lon

I don't know what the problem is as I didn't have one so far but it seems something is not working here.
  • adamsmith
    The error you see is a sync error. One of your tags is too long and/or contains an illegal character - if you can try to identify and delete the tag - that'd be the easiest solution.

    Looking at the output of "report errors" directly after a failed (manual) sync (just click on the green arrow) might give you a longer/more helpful error message.
  • ajlyon
    It sounds like that long tag was added by a misbehaving site translator. If you happen to know the URL that you got it from and you don't mind sharing it here, I'll look into addressing the bug that created that tag to begin with.
  • André_A
    Thanks to both of you - I found these strange tags and they were caused by this sites:
    http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/Publikationen/52674
    http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/Publikationen/52678

    Although I don't really see through, it seems to me the site doesn't exactly do a good job providing bibliographic information considering the fact that it is a research platform. Apart from the tag issue it didn't provide the correct information for the authors.
    Maybe it has to do with the fact that the research articles can not be downloaded directly from these pages, but since there is even a citation information at the bottom why shouldn't it give this information to Zotero?
  • ajlyon
    edited October 12, 2010
    The metadata that Zotero is detecting for that site is indeed very low quality -- sites have to make an effort to expose computer-readable data for Zotero to use; see http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/make_your_site_zotero_ready for details. If you have contacts in the institution hosting the pages, you may want to point out to them that their software is inserting error messages into the subject headings on the page, and encourage them to look into including better metadata, as explained in the link above.

    If they or you are interested, the culprit in the site's code was:
    <meta name="DC.subject" content="<br />
    <b>Warning</b>: htmlspecialchars() expects parameter 1 to be string,
    array given in <b>/srv/www/htdocs/www.alexandria.unisg.ch/classes/smarty/plugins/modifier.escape.php</b>
    on line <b>33</b><br />
    Array" />
  • adamsmith
    In general you might want to consider turning "Automatically Tag items..." off in the General tab of the Zotero preferences - that is, unless you usually find the automatically provided tags useful.
  • André_A
    Ah, that comes right from the meta information in the header - really strange!

    Anyway, I sent an e-mail to the technical contact mentioned on their site - let's hope I'll get an answer soon.

    Some library catalogues actually provide useful automatic tags so I leave it activated for the moment.

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Instead of commenting here, you should start a new discussion. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.