2-May-2017
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I was surprised to find that
StringEscapeUtils in the
Apache Commons Lang library doesn't let you specify whether it should double encode existing
XML entities or not. After all, even
PHP lets you do this. There is a very simple workaround for that however, so read on.
In
PHP if you want to avoid double-encoding you simply pass
false to the
htmlentities() function like so:
This will output
& instead of
& i.e. the string is not double encoded.
To achieve the same result with
Java and
Apache Commons Lang StringEscapeUtils all you have to do is:
That's simple after you see it! Just
unescape the string first, then
escape it. That will take care of any already encoded entities and will avoid double encoding.
-i
A quick disclaimer...
Although I put in a great effort into researching all the topics I cover, mistakes can happen.
If you spot something out of place, please do let me know.
All content and opinions expressed on this Blog are my own and do not represent the opinions of my employer (Oracle).
Use of any information contained in this blog post/article is subject to
this disclaimer.
Igor Kromin
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