Unnecessary esc_html() in get_checkbox_choices()?

Using the hook 'populate_dropdown' I'm trying to set checkboxes with formatted HTML but am unable to because of what seems like an Unnecessary esc_html() on line 684 of common.php.

It's possible that you really do need to run esc_html() for other contexts than the one I'm using but thus far I can't see why. Without being able to set HTML in the 'text' I can't provide formatting that would enable my list of checkboxes to be easily understood by my website visitors.

An alternate would be to use an 'html' field and not escape it, if it contains a value but continue to escape the 'text' field. Or provide a filter where I can make the changes myself.

I need this site to go live ASAP and really don't want to hack your plugin unless I know you are going to make the change. Thanks in advance for your quick response.

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the comment. I hear you that it doesn't support it (via admin console) but it does (inadvertently?) support it via hooks. Below is a function I'm using to present a list of categories and their descriptions to users, but the HTML I am using for formatting gets displayed on the page instead of affecting the formatting of the content as I intended.

I hacked your plugin to make it work (i.e. I only removed the call to esc_html()) and it displays as I want it to but I don't like hacking someone else's code that will be upgraded in the future.

Here's a simple thing; could you check a value in the field array and not escape the HTML if it exists and is false? (i.e. $field['esc_html']==false.) That way I can create forward compatible code....

Thanks for considering.

add_filter('gform_pre_render_2', 'populate_dropdown');
function populate_dropdown($form){
  $args = array(
    'hide_empty' => false,
    'exclude' => 1, // 1 = Uncategorized
    );
  $categories = get_categories($args);
  //Creating drop down item array.
  $items = array();
  //Adding post titles to the items array
  foreach($categories as $category) {
    $items[] = array(
      'value' => $category->slug,
      'text' => '<span class="category-name">' .
           $category->name .
         '</span>: <div class="category-description">' .
           $category->category_description .
         '</span>',
      'isSelected' => false
    );
  }
  $items[] = array(
    'value' => 'other',
    'text'=>'<span class="category-name">Other</span>: '
      . '<div class="category-description">'
      . 'Something else? Tell us below.'
      . '</span>',
    'isSelected' => false
  );
  foreach($form["fields"] as &$field)
    if(element_equals($field,'inputName','categories')) {
      $field["choices"] = $items;
      break;
    }
  return $form;
}

Thanks. While I love jQuery for interactive functionality and have done a fair bit of it myself, I really dislike using it for simple formatting. It breaks when people have Javascript turned off and it causes page loads to be sluggish on slower computers. I'd far, far prefer to do that kind of coding in PHP on the server (where it was meant to be done! :)

How about another solution? How about adding a 'gform_field_input' hook to get field input and instead of directly sprint()ing or returning you first pass through said filter?

BTW, I'm not getting email notifications even though I check "Subscribe to this Topic via Email." Are your email notifications not working?