Replace characters with HTML entities in Java
escaping, html, html-entities, jakarta-ee
Solution
From Java you may try Apache Commons Lang (legacy v2) `StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml()`. Or with commons-lang3: `StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml4()`.
Please note this also converts `à` to `à` & such.
Problem
I want to replace certain characters with their respective HTML entities in an HTML response inside a filter. Characters include `<`, `>`, `&`. I can't use `replaceAll()` as it will replace all characters, even those that are part of HTML tags. What is the best approach for doing so?