How to decode XHTML and/or HTML5 entities in Java?

Question

I have some strings that contain XHTML character entities:

"They&apos;re quite varied"
"Sometimes the string &isin; XML standard, sometimes &isin; HTML4 standard"
"Therefore -&gt; I need an XHTML entity decoder."
"Sadly, some strings are not valid XML & are not-quite-so-valid HTML <- but I want them to work, too."

Is there any easy way to decode the entities? (I'm using Java)

I'm currently using StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(myString.replace("'", "\'")) as a temporary hack. Sadly, org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils has unescapeHtml4 and unescapeXML, but no unescapeXhtml.

EDIT: I do want to handle invalid XML, for example I want "&&xyzzy;" to decode to "&&xyzzy;"

EDIT: I think HTML5 has almost the same character entities as XHTML, so I think HTML 5 decoder would be fine too.

@JanDvorak: If the input was guaranteed to be valid XHTML, then I'd be happy. Furthermore, XML by itself doesn't have all the HTML references. — Karol S
– Karol S, Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 14:38

jmkgreen · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-19 14:34:06Z

1

This may not be directly relevant but you may wish to adopt JSoup which handles things like that albeit from a higher level. Includes web page cleaning routines.

answered Feb 19, 2014 at 14:34

jmkgreen

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2 Comments

Karol S Over a year ago

Thanks, looks great, but in my use case it would be an overkill.

Gimby Over a year ago

There is no such thing as overkill - only problems and solutions. JSoup is a solution and a far better one than doing manual search & replaces.

ehe888 · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-25 01:36:48Z

Have you tried to implement a XHTMLStringEscapeUtils based on the facilities provide by org.apache.commons.text.StringEscapeUtils?

import org.apache.commons.text.StringEscapeUtils;
import org.apache.commons.text.translate.*;

public class XHTMLStringEscapeUtils {
    public static final CharSequenceTranslator ESCAPE_XHTML =
            new AggregateTranslator(
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.BASIC_ESCAPE),
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.ISO8859_1_ESCAPE),
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.HTML40_EXTENDED_ESCAPE)
            ).with(StringEscapeUtils.ESCAPE_XML11);

    public static final CharSequenceTranslator UNESCAPE_XHTML =
            new AggregateTranslator(
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.BASIC_UNESCAPE),
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.ISO8859_1_UNESCAPE),
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.HTML40_EXTENDED_UNESCAPE),
                    new NumericEntityUnescaper(),
                    new LookupTranslator(EntityArrays.APOS_UNESCAPE)
            );

    public static final String escape(final String input) {
        return ESCAPE_XHTML.translate(input);
    }

    public static final String unescape(final String input) {
        return UNESCAPE_XHTML.translate(input);
    }
}

Thanks to the modular design of Apache commons-text lib, it's easy to create custom escape utils.

You can find a full project with tests here xhtml-string-escape-utils

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