Template:COinS safe/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:COinS safe.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

Usage

This template is a notice for templates that may be used in citation templates. By default, it indicates the template is safe for use as shown above.

To indicate a template that should not be used in a citation template:

{{COinS safe|n}}

Issue

Citation templates such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 generate COinS metadata. If a template is used in a citation template field, then it may inject HTML into the metadata.

Compare the rendered HTML for {{cite book}} with |author= using no template and using {{smallcaps}}.

Markup	Renders as
{{cite book \|author=Sam Drucker \|title=Title}}	Sam Drucker. Title. `<span class="citation book" >Sam Drucker. ''Title''.</span><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.aulast=Sam+Drucker&rft.au=Sam+Drucker&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Template:COinS_safe/doc"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span>`
{{cite book \|author={{smallcaps\|Sam Drucker}} \|title=Title}}	Sam Drucker. Title. <span class="citation book" ><span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">Sam Drucker</span>. ''Title''.</span><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.aulast=%3Cspan+class%3D%22smallcaps%22+style%3D%22font-variant%3Asmall-caps%3B%22%3ESam+Drucker%3C%2Fspan%3E&rft.au=%3Cspan+class%3D%22smallcaps%22+style%3D%22font-variant%3Asmall-caps%3B%22%3ESam+Drucker%3C%2Fspan%3E&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Template:COinS_safe/doc"><span style="display: none;"> </span></span>

The author metadata is in the rft.aulast field. In this case, it is percent-encoded and is rendered as <span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">Sam Drucker</span>

Reference management software will interpret the entire span as the author name.