Encoding HTML

[Jesper Ottosson]

In Java, is there any equivalence of ASP's Server.HTMLEncode method, which replaces a strings all special characters to their html counterparts (e.g "<" to "<")?
btw, yes, I know I could do it myself, but... I don't wanna
/ Jesper

[Matt Williams]

Here is what I use:

public static String HTMLEncode(String input) {
StringBuffer filtered = new StringBuffer(input.length());
char c;
for(int i=0; i<input.length(); i++) {
c = input.charAt(i);
if (c == '<') {
filtered.append("<");
} else if (c == '>') {
filtered.append(">");
} else if (c == '"') {
filtered.append(""");
} else if (c == '&') {
filtered.append("&");
} else {
filtered.append(c);
}
}
return(filtered.toString());
}

[David O'Meara]

Heh, foiled by the old "double-escape" problem...
Try this...

public static String HTMLEncode(String input) {
StringBuffer filtered = new StringBuffer(input.length());
char c;
for(int i=0; i<input.length(); i++) {
c = input.charAt(i);
if (c == '<') {
filtered.append("&lt;");
} else if (c == '>') {
filtered.append("&gt;");
} else if (c == '"') {
filtered.append("&quot;");
} else if (c == '&') {
filtered.append("&amp;");
} else {
filtered.append(c);
}
}
return(filtered.toString());
}

Alternatively, if you suck into an XML Document as a Text Element, I think it does the conversion for you... (just as a suggestion, it wouldn't be the correct thing to do, but it IS a short cut)
Dave.