[muditagrawal2007]

Summary

Templates render into markdown notes, not HTML. Both Handlebars.compile calls in src/parser.ts were called with default options, which made escapeExpression run on every {{ var }} and encode ' " & < > to HTML entities.

That mangles:

• The note body — every text, number, boolean, date, time, and dropdown variable.
• template_title — so the entry in the notebook list reads it's a "test".
• template_tags — same.

The bug is silent: Joplin's markdown viewer renders the entities correctly, so the rendered note looks fine. The corruption lives in the source. It only surfaces when the user edits, searches, exports, or syncs the note elsewhere.

Fix

Pass { noEscape: true } to both Handlebars.compile calls:

// src/parser.ts:137  (parseSpecialVariables — used for template_title and template_tags)
const compiledText = Handlebars.compile(specialVariables[variable], { noEscape: true });

// src/parser.ts:286  (parseTemplate — used for the note body)
const compiledTemplate = Handlebars.compile(templateBody, { noEscape: true });

Under noEscape, {{ var }} behaves exactly like {{{ var }}}. So:

• No regression for any existing template, including the workaround users already know ({{{ var }}}) — both forms produce the same output.
• No input-side fix needed: dropdown (enum) values arrive at the dialog already decoded. Verified — noEscape alone is sufficient.

Reproduction (before the fix)

---
note_text: text
---

{{ note_text }}

Enter it's a "test" in the dialog.

• Expected body: it's a "test"
• Actual body: it's a "test"

Same with template_title: {{ note_text }} — the title becomes it's a "test".

Risk

None visible:

• The change is local to two compile calls.
• The only downstream consumers are the note body, template_title, and the tag list (which already runs through split(",").map(trim).filter(...) in getNoteMetadata).
• noEscape only turns off escaping that was wrong for this medium.

Tests

Three regression tests added to tests/parser.spec.ts:

1. should not HTML-escape text, number and dropdown variables in the body (#173) — text_var = "it's a \"test\" with &amp; <markup>" renders verbatim; explicit not.toContain("'") / " / < / > assertions on the body.
2. should not HTML-escape template_title and template_tags (#173) — verifies the title and tag list round-trip, with not.toMatch(/&(amp|quot|#x27|lt|gt);/) on all three.
3. should still support the {{{ var }}} triple-stache under noEscape (#173) — confirms {{ and {{{ produce identical output, so existing templates that already use the workaround are unaffected.

Verification

• npm test — 104/104 pass (101 existing + 3 new).
• npm run lint — 0 errors introduced (only pre-existing warnings on unrelated files).
• npm run dist — plugin archive builds cleanly.

Related

• Roblems with date time and calculation when set to 25-12-31 #114, Error when parsing date #156, When using the date picker, the date I select gets reported one day earlier #169 — independent date-helper bugs. Not related.
• preProcessTemplateBody regex: \S in a template literal collapses to a literal S #176, wrapInQuotes skips values containing a double quote, so helper arguments break frontmatter parsing #177, $ sequences in special variable values are mangled by preProcessTemplateBody #184 — independent preProcessTemplateBody frontmatter-quoting bugs. Not related.