Fixing Font Rendering Issues with Raw Blade Output

We recently encountered a peculiar font rendering issue in our application where CSS font-family declarations within <style> tags were being improperly escaped. This resulted in the browser ignoring the intended font styles. Here's how we diagnosed and resolved the problem.

The Problem

When using Blade's {{ }} syntax to output the font-family CSS property, single quotes within the font name were being HTML-escaped to '. For example:

<style>
  body {
    font-family: 'Custom Font';
  }
</style>

Was rendering as:

<style>
  body {
    font-family: &#039;Custom Font&#039;;
  }
</style>

This invalid CSS caused the browser to fall back to the default font, disrupting the intended visual design.

The Solution

To address this, we switched to using raw Blade output with the !! !! syntax. This tells Blade to render the content without any HTML escaping.

<style>
  body {
    font-family: !! $fontFamily !!;
  }
</style>

Where $fontFamily is a variable containing the font-family string (e.g., 'Custom Font'). By using raw output, the single quotes are passed through directly to the browser, resulting in valid CSS.

Example

Let's say in your controller you have:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ExampleController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $fontFamily = "'Open Sans', sans-serif";
        return view('example', ['fontFamily' => $fontFamily]);
    }
}

Then in your Blade view:

<style>
 body {
  font-family: !! $fontFamily !!; 
 }
</style>

This will correctly render the font-family without escaping the single quotes.

Key Takeaway

Be mindful of HTML escaping when generating CSS dynamically. Raw Blade output (!! !!) provides a way to bypass escaping when it's not desired, ensuring correct rendering of styles in the browser.