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Formatting: introduce esc_attr_name() for HTML attribute name sanitization - #12915

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SainathPoojary:fix/43010
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Formatting: introduce esc_attr_name() for HTML attribute name sanitization#12915
SainathPoojary wants to merge 2 commits into
WordPress:trunkfrom
SainathPoojary:fix/43010

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@SainathPoojary

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The HTML5 spec allows arbitrarily named attributes (e.g., data-*), but WordPress lacked a dedicated function to escape dynamically generated attribute names. Developers sometimes incorrectly used esc_attr() for this, which only escapes attribute values.

This PR introduces esc_attr_name() in formatting.php to resolve this. It uses a strict allowlist regex ([^a-zA-Z0-9_.:\[\]-]+/u) to strip any characters not explicitly permitted in an HTML attribute name per the HTML5 specification (such as spaces, quotes, control characters, <>, =, etc.).

Trac ticket: #43010


This Pull Request is for code review only. Please keep all other discussion in the Trac ticket. Do not merge this Pull Request. See GitHub Pull Requests for Code Review in the Core Handbook for more details.

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github-actions Bot commented Aug 6, 2026

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