Variable for STATUS includes spurious HTML

[mikewhippsHarvest]

While editing the upsstats-single.html template to produce JSON output I discovered that the @STATUS@ template variable returns a spurious <br> element, as in ONLINE<br>

I haven't tested the output of other values for this variable.

This is running on a Raspberry Pi. Here's the driver info block output from upsc

driver.name: usbhid-ups
driver.parameter.pollfreq: 30
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 2
driver.parameter.port: auto
driver.parameter.productid: ffff
driver.parameter.synchronous: auto
driver.parameter.vendorid: 0463
driver.version: 2.8.0
driver.version.data: MGE HID 1.46
driver.version.internal: 0.47
driver.version.usb: libusb-1.0.26 (API: 0x1000109)

[jimklimov]

Looking at git blame, this <br> seems deliberate and is there for a long time, per https://github.com/networkupstools/nut/blame/0d61b63182aedc3be2388126bb05c9f804b352b0/clients/upsstats.c#L170-L173 => 8ae7be7

I'd say nowadays it should be more properly a <br/> tag (opened+closed), and for your question - only added before second+ status token. Maybe a space could be better, but likely less predictable for visual width/wrapping etc.

• Is your question about the br tag here due to Add new templates options #2524 - are you trying to parse info from HTML markup for now?

FWIW there is another break tag at https://github.com/networkupstools/nut/blame/0d61b63182aedc3be2388126bb05c9f804b352b0/clients/upsstats.c#L925 and I struggle to see why: it is a fixed end of a table cell... @aquette : any memories here? some crafty browsers liked it so? :)

[mikewhippsHarvest]

I've created a template to output the data I want in JSON. Apart from limitations on the use of custom templates (for which I opened another issue) this is working well, but...

PRTG has limited capabilities for processing data it imports this way. I can import a single custom text message along with properly formatted numeric data. If I want to import a message like, for example, UPS is ONLINE the presence of the <br> tag messes up the formatting in the PRTG display, if it will import it at all.

PRTG provides no facility to manipulate imported text, or substitute from a lookup table, so I have to use the value from the UPS (just OL or OB, etc.), or use ONLINE<br> as is.

If I were editing the template to produce HTML I'd expect a substituted variable to return just the value. I wouldn't want to have to work around an unwanted <br>. If I need a <br> in my HTML then I can add it in the template.

I wonder if this is left over from some pre-template version of code.

We're still evaluating the software. None of this is a showstopper for us, but it seemed odd, so I raised the issue. I could write a Powershell script to retrieve the data and manipulate it, but that's overkill for one unwanted tag at present.

[jimklimov]

Fair enough. Since the single STATUS entry in the template is constructed from several tokens active at the time, they should be somehow separated - spaces, "br" tokens, marked up as a JSON or YAML list of quoted strings, etc.

And it is the precompiled program that should add those marks.

Maybe we should add optional extensions to the tags, e.g. @STATUS:JSON@ or @STATUS:SPACES@ to cause emission of certain markup.