fix: update sanitize_html_id to replace periods along with dashes and…#38871
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alenkadev wants to merge 2 commits into
Open
fix: update sanitize_html_id to replace periods along with dashes and…#38871alenkadev wants to merge 2 commits into
alenkadev wants to merge 2 commits into
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Alam-2U
approved these changes
Jul 10, 2026
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Problem: Staff debug info button does not work on EPFLx+drug-discovery (Introduction to Drug Discovery)
Root cause
Some older/imported XBlocks can have block IDs containing periods (.), for example question_1.4.100. These IDs are used to generate the HTML IDs for the staff tooling modals (Staff Debug Info, Submission History, and QA).
The staff tooling uses the generated IDs directly as jQuery/CSS selectors through LeanModal. Since periods are interpreted as CSS selector syntax rather than literal characters, the selector fails to locate the modal element. As a result, clicking Staff Debug Info dims the page but the modal never appears.
Newly created or duplicated XBlocks are not affected because they receive auto-generated alphanumeric IDs (UUIDs), which do not contain periods.
Solution
Extend sanitize_html_id() to replace periods (.) with underscores (_) in addition to the characters it already sanitizes (: and -).
This ensures that all HTML IDs generated for staff tooling are safe to use as unescaped jQuery/CSS selectors, allowing the Staff Debug Info, Submission History, and QA modals to open correctly for XBlocks regardless of how their block IDs were originally created.
before fix:
after fix:
jira_link: https://2u-internal.atlassian.net/browse/LP-849