Is there a JDK class to do HTML encoding (but not URL encoding)?

html java html-encode
Eddie picture Eddie · Mar 17, 2009 · Viewed 51.8k times · Source

I am of course familiar with the java.net.URLEncoder and java.net.URLDecoder classes. However, I only need HTML-style encoding. (I don't want ' ' replaced with '+', etc). I am not aware of any JDK built in class that will do just HTML encoding. Is there one? I am aware of other choices (for example, Jakarta Commons Lang 'StringEscapeUtils', but I don't want to add another external dependency to the project where I need this.

I'm hoping that something has been added to a recent JDK (aka 5 or 6) that will do this that I don't know about. Otherwise I have to roll my own.

Answer

johnmcase picture johnmcase · Mar 17, 2009

There isn't a JDK built in class to do this, but it is part of the Jakarta commons-lang library.

String escaped = StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml3(stringToEscape);
String escaped = StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml4(stringToEscape);

Check out the JavaDoc

Adding the dependency is usually as simple as dropping the jar somewhere, and commons-lang has so many useful utilities that it is often worthwhile having it on board.

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