Convert HTML Character Back to Text Using Java Standard Library

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/599634

  •  11-09-2019
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Question

I would like to convert some HTML characters back to text using Java Standard Library. I was wondering whether any library would achieve my purpose?

/**
 * @param args the command line arguments
 */
public static void main(String[] args) {
    // TODO code application logic here

    // "Happy & Sad" in HTML form.
    String s = "Happy & Sad";
    System.out.println(s);

    try {
        // Change to "Happy & Sad". DOESN'T WORK!
        s = java.net.URLDecoder.decode(s, "UTF-8");
        System.out.println(s);
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {

    }
}
Was it helpful?

Solution

I think the Apache Commons Lang library's StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml3() and unescapeHtml4() methods are what you are looking for. See https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-text/javadocs/api-release/org/apache/commons/text/StringEscapeUtils.html.

OTHER TIPS

Here you have to just add jar file in lib jsoup in your application and then use this code.

import org.jsoup.Jsoup;

public class Encoder {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        String s = Jsoup.parse("<Français>").text();
        System.out.print(s);
    }
}

Link to download jsoup: http://jsoup.org/download

java.net.URLDecoder deals only with the application/x-www-form-urlencoded MIME format (e.g. "%20" represents space), not with HTML character entities. I don't think there's anything on the Java platform for that. You could write your own utility class to do the conversion, like this one.

The URL decoder should only be used for decoding strings from the urls generated by html forms which are in the "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" mime type. This does not support html characters.

After a search I found a Translate class within the HTML Parser library.

You can use the class org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils:

String s = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml("Happy & Sad")

It is working.

I'm not aware of any way to do it using the standard library. But I do know and use this class that deals with html entities.

"HTMLEntities is an Open Source Java class that contains a collection of static methods (htmlentities, unhtmlentities, ...) to convert special and extended characters into HTML entitities and vice versa."

http://www.tecnick.com/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=htmlentities

Or you can use unescapeHtml4:

    String miCadena="GUÍA TELEFÓNICA";
    System.out.println(StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(miCadena));

This code print the line: GUÍA TELEFÓNICA

As @jem suggested, it is possible to use jsoup.

With jSoup 1.8.3 it il possible to use the method Parser.unescapeEntities that retain the original html.

import org.jsoup.parser.Parser;
...
String html = Parser.unescapeEntities(original_html, false);

It seems that in some previous release this method is not present.

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