Unexpected Token ILLEGAL - response.write() error

Question

Unexpected Token ILLEGAL - response.write() error

As sort of an introduction to node.js for a class, I'm using it to program a cgi script that handles a simple login/logout/userID system. I'm having an issue though, as where I try to use the response.write() method to hand the HTML to the client, I'm receiving an Unexpected Token ILLEGAL error on the quotation mark where I am starting my string:

var response = require('HTTP');
login = inputReader('QUERY_STRING');

if (login === "false" || login === "logout") {
response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
response.write(
  " <!doctype html>
    <head>
      <title>Session Makes</title>
      <meta name='Author' content='Sam Judson'>
      <meta name='Contact' content='sjudson@marlboro.org'>
      <link rel='stylesheet' href='SessionMaker.css'>
    </head>
        <body>
          <h1>The way is shut.</h1>
          <form action='' method='put'>
            <input type='text' name='login'>
            <input type='submit' name='login' value='Login'>
            </form>
        </body>
        </html> "
);
};

The error gets thrown at the quotation mark that starts line 7. I've tried just about everything I can (using single instead of double quotes, nesting quotes, removing the quotes, putting the string inside brackets, etc.), but nothing seems to work. The weird thing is I've seen a number of examples on websites doing the exact same thing I'm trying to do, with no such issue.

node.js

Answer 1

It seems that you have wrong formatting for the string, in javascript you can't continue a string to a new line without either escaping the newline or adding strings over lines.

This will throw an error:

  var str = "Starting string
  trying to continue";

Using escaping

  var str = "Starting string\
  trying to continue";

Using adding

  var str = "Starting string" +
  "trying to continue";