Question

I am using Java 1.6.0

I am looking for the correct methods of encoding special HTML characters in Java

My HTML

 <div id="sliceXML">Florida</div>

I am trying to define a String xmlMatch as the content (in this case Florida) of the above div tag by using the below Java. However i believe i do not have my startTag or endTag defined correctly.

My Java

String testContent = contentPara;
String startTag = "\"sliceXML\">";                      
String endTag = "</div";                                        
String xmlMatch = null; 

int startPosition = testContent.indexOf(startTag);  

if(startPosition >1){

    int subStringIndex = startPosition + startTag.length();                                 
    int endPosition = testContent.indexOf(endTag, subStringIndex);              

    if(endPosition >= startPosition){
        xmlMatch = testContent.substring(subStringIndex, endPosition);
        out.println(xmlMatch.length()); 

    //out.println(startTag);

    out.println("Florida".equals(xmlMatch));
    out.println("florida".equals(xmlMatch));
}   
 }

Any help is much appricated. This would also allow me to answer a previous related question here

EDIT

WORK AROUND SOLUTION

As i explain below, i believe my issue was with the forward slash in String endTag = "</div"; To get past this problem i simply changed my end tag to String endTag = "<";

I still dont know why this happened, it would be great if someone could answer.

Answer 1

I would really use an HTML parser, such as the confusingly-named JTidy (it’s an HTML pretty-printer, but also gives you a DOM interface to the HTML structure).

It’ll save you from headaches such as the parsing and handling character entities and encoding.