How to return × from Meteor helper functions?

help
1

Level: Newbie

Intent: to print “×” if “proportion” is set to anything but “Direct”.
Actual output: prints literal characters ampersand followed by ‘times;’ rather than “×”.
Help needed: to return something that actually prints “times” character.

html/template invocation:

<template name="dynSym">
	<div id="symbol">{{symbol}}</div>
</template>

Javascript:

Template.dynSym.helpers({
	symbol() {
		operation = proportion.get();
		if (operation == "Direct") return ':';
		return "&times;";
	}
});
2

You can use triple-bracket notation to “inject” string content that is parsed as html, but beware, this is always risky and open to potential XSS (even if just hypothetically I would always try to avoid it):

<template name="dynSym">
	<div id="symbol">{{{symbol}}}</div>
</template>

A better choice would be to use a condition an print the characters directly in the html Template:

<template name="dynSym">
	<div id="symbol">{{#if isDirect}}:{{else}}&times;{{/if}}</div>
</template>

Template.dynSym.helpers({
	isDirect () {
		operation = proportion.get();
		return operation === "Direct" // also always prefer ===
	}
});

References:

3

Thanks. I will choose the second one for security reasons.
However, the second approach seems to defy my impression about the “meteor way” in which all model/control based decisions are delegated to JS and HTML is just at view layer.