Popup re-formats desired values

[JamesCrandall]

We have a hosted feature layer that published from a feature class in a file geodatabase.  The attributes in the columns are formatted in a specific desired way so as to have padded spaces between characters in these TEXT columns.  As seen in the attribute table itself:

For the feature layer after it is uploaded and a hosted feature layer is created, we set a custom attribute display and configure the columns as required:

However, in the actual popup it seems to re-format the values and removes the padding/spaces between the characters:

Is there any way to prohibit this from happening or an alternative workaround?

[RandyBurton]

It might be an HTML thing where spaces get combined.  Have you experimented with non-breaking spaces?

UPDATE:

I did some testing with AGO and replaced spaces with non-breaking spaces (ASCII 160) in a test field. AGO replaced them with the proper html escape codes when displaying them.

[JamesCrandall]

Thanks Randy,

Could you clarify?  Are you saying that in your testing AGO automatically removed the spaces?  

If so, then I would assume there's nothing that can be done to stop this.

Thanks again!

Take care.

[RandyBurton · Accepted solution]

James,

You should be able to use field calculator or something similar to replace spaces (ASCII 32) with non-breaking spaces (ASCII160).  I was using a REST API query/update for my testing.  Since the non-breaking space is a special character in html, it uses a special escape sequence.  AGO will use this escape sequence, so you get non-breaking spaces.  When you string several non-breaking spaces together, you will get the desired padding in the map's pop-ups.  The web browser will not combine non-breaking spaces into a single space.

[JamesCrandall]

Oh!  Okay understood!

Thanks for the suggestion!