How do I escape a single quote ( ' ) in JavaScript?

UPDATE: I want to give an updated answer to this question. First, let me state if you're attempting to accomplish what I have below, I recommend that you manage events by adding event listeners instead. I highly recommend that you utilize jQuery for your project and use their syntax to manage event listeners over using DOM.

QUESTION

Okay, I am basically doing this:

document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src='something' onmouseover='change(\'ex1\')' />";

I don't want double quotes (") where I put the '. I only want a single quote, so I am trying to not make it put a double when it is used. I am trying to reach this in the final outcome.

<img src="something" onmouseover="change('ex1')" />

Escaping isn't working for me.

My marked answer works fine, however, the cleaner (and more professional-looking way, IMO) is loganfsmyth's answer.

You should always consider what the browser will see by the end. In this case, it will see this:

<img src='something' onmouseover='change(' ex1')' />

In other words, the "onmouseover" attribute is just change(, and there's another "attribute" called ex1')' with no value.

The truth is, HTML does not use \ for an escape character. But it does recognise " and ' as escaped quote and apostrophe, respectively.

Armed with this knowledge, use this:

document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src='something' onmouseover='change(&quot;ex1&quot;)' />";

... That being said, you could just use JavaScript quotes:

document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src='something' onmouseover='change(\"ex1\")' />";

The answer here is very simple:

You're already containing it in double quotes, so there's no need to escape it with \.

If you want to escape single quotes in a single quote string:

var string = 'this isn\'t a double quoted string';
var string = "this isn\"t a single quoted string";
//           ^         ^ same types, hence we need to escape it with a backslash

or if you want to escape \', you can escape the bashslash to \\ and the quote to \' like so:

var string = 'this isn\\\'t a double quoted string';
//                    vvvv
//                     \ ' (the escaped characters)

However, if you contain the string with a different quote type, you don't need to escape:

var string = 'this isn"t a double quoted string';
var string = "this isn't a single quoted string";
//           ^        ^ different types, hence we don't need escaping

You can escape a ' in JavaScript like \'

Since the values are actually inside of an HTML attribute, you should use '

"<img src='something' onmouseover='change(&apos;ex1&apos;)' />";

    document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = "<img src=\"something\" onmouseover=\"change('ex1')\" />";

OR

    document.getElementById("something").innerHTML = '<img src="something" onmouseover="change(\'ex1\')" />';

It should be working...