How do I specify a line break in a macro's body content?

[Jim Bethancourt]

We're migrating from Confluence 3.5 to Confluence 5 and have a custom macro that renders its body content. We're using <br> tags in the macro body content, and they no longer seem to work (perhaps to prevent injection attacks?). How do I represent a line break in a macro body?

Thanks,

Jim

[Jim Bethancourt · Accepted solution]

A big hack, but what worked was splitting the string on the <BR> tag in the Velocity template and putting a <br> after each token.

#if($person.title.contains("<BR>"))
    #foreach($token in $person.title.split("<BR>"))
        $token<br>
    #end
#else
    $!person.title
#end

[Jim Bethancourt]

One clarification that I forgot to add was that I am using a Velocity template renderer. I think the appropriate solution may be to follow the example of the com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.expand.ExpandMacro class. I'll try the approach it uses with another macro I need to migrade that uses a Velocity template and post an update here.

[Matthew J. Horn]

Is it possible that the XHTML parser is more strict in Confluence 5? Have you tried closing the <br> tag by making it <br/>?

[Jim Bethancourt]

I'm guessing that's the case (possibly to prevent injection attacks). Unfortunately I had no luck with a <br/> tag either. :-(

Should I file a bug?

[Matthew J. Horn]

Well, they work fine for me in 4.2. Could you post the entire macro so I can see how it's used? Maybe there's some funkyness that I'm not foreseeing...