How do I identify HTML tags and replace a character in between?

Question

I have this string:

String s="<div style='font: 12px arial, sans-serif;'><b>Menu:<<>></b></div>"

I want to change the <<>> to &lt;&lt;&gt;&gt; to get the output:

String s="<div style='font: 12px arial, sans-serif;'><b>Menu:&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;</b></div>"

I have used regex once a while back to retrieve text from the tags but how is this possible? I need the correct output.

I aim for this to be for general-purpose HTML tags, not just the particular ones in this post.

@T.J.Crowder Java .. i have rectified the post .. its just to give an idea not the actual code .. — Rafay
– Rafay, Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 8:49
Why do you want to turn <<>> into <<>> (which would actually render as <<) rather than <<>>?! — T.J. Crowder
– T.J. Crowder, Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 8:49
@Rafay: I'd question it, it doesn't seem to make any sense. You'll end up with HTML that shows the character entities, rather than characters: jsbin.com/vabede/1 — T.J. Crowder
– T.J. Crowder, Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 8:52

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:59:20Z

1

you can use commons-lang's StringEscapeUtils class to do this.

string s="<div style='font: 12px arial, sans-serif;'><b>Menu:<<>></b></div>";    
System.out.println(StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml(s));

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answered Nov 20, 2014 at 8:59

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