How to convert characters to HTML entities using plain JavaScript

Solution 1:

With the help of bucabay and the advice to create my own function i created this one which works for me. What do you guys think, is there a better solution somewhere?

if(typeof escapeHtmlEntities == 'undefined') {
        escapeHtmlEntities = function (text) {
            return text.replace(/[\u00A0-\u2666<>\&]/g, function(c) {
                return '&' + 
                (escapeHtmlEntities.entityTable[c.charCodeAt(0)] || '#'+c.charCodeAt(0)) + ';';
            });
        };

        // all HTML4 entities as defined here: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html
        // added: amp, lt, gt, quot and apos
        escapeHtmlEntities.entityTable = {
            34 : 'quot', 
            38 : 'amp', 
            39 : 'apos', 
            60 : 'lt', 
            62 : 'gt', 
            160 : 'nbsp', 
            161 : 'iexcl', 
            162 : 'cent', 
            163 : 'pound', 
            164 : 'curren', 
            165 : 'yen', 
            166 : 'brvbar', 
            167 : 'sect', 
            168 : 'uml', 
            169 : 'copy', 
            170 : 'ordf', 
            171 : 'laquo', 
            172 : 'not', 
            173 : 'shy', 
            174 : 'reg', 
            175 : 'macr', 
            176 : 'deg', 
            177 : 'plusmn', 
            178 : 'sup2', 
            179 : 'sup3', 
            180 : 'acute', 
            181 : 'micro', 
            182 : 'para', 
            183 : 'middot', 
            184 : 'cedil', 
            185 : 'sup1', 
            186 : 'ordm', 
            187 : 'raquo', 
            188 : 'frac14', 
            189 : 'frac12', 
            190 : 'frac34', 
            191 : 'iquest', 
            192 : 'Agrave', 
            193 : 'Aacute', 
            194 : 'Acirc', 
            195 : 'Atilde', 
            196 : 'Auml', 
            197 : 'Aring', 
            198 : 'AElig', 
            199 : 'Ccedil', 
            200 : 'Egrave', 
            201 : 'Eacute', 
            202 : 'Ecirc', 
            203 : 'Euml', 
            204 : 'Igrave', 
            205 : 'Iacute', 
            206 : 'Icirc', 
            207 : 'Iuml', 
            208 : 'ETH', 
            209 : 'Ntilde', 
            210 : 'Ograve', 
            211 : 'Oacute', 
            212 : 'Ocirc', 
            213 : 'Otilde', 
            214 : 'Ouml', 
            215 : 'times', 
            216 : 'Oslash', 
            217 : 'Ugrave', 
            218 : 'Uacute', 
            219 : 'Ucirc', 
            220 : 'Uuml', 
            221 : 'Yacute', 
            222 : 'THORN', 
            223 : 'szlig', 
            224 : 'agrave', 
            225 : 'aacute', 
            226 : 'acirc', 
            227 : 'atilde', 
            228 : 'auml', 
            229 : 'aring', 
            230 : 'aelig', 
            231 : 'ccedil', 
            232 : 'egrave', 
            233 : 'eacute', 
            234 : 'ecirc', 
            235 : 'euml', 
            236 : 'igrave', 
            237 : 'iacute', 
            238 : 'icirc', 
            239 : 'iuml', 
            240 : 'eth', 
            241 : 'ntilde', 
            242 : 'ograve', 
            243 : 'oacute', 
            244 : 'ocirc', 
            245 : 'otilde', 
            246 : 'ouml', 
            247 : 'divide', 
            248 : 'oslash', 
            249 : 'ugrave', 
            250 : 'uacute', 
            251 : 'ucirc', 
            252 : 'uuml', 
            253 : 'yacute', 
            254 : 'thorn', 
            255 : 'yuml', 
            402 : 'fnof', 
            913 : 'Alpha', 
            914 : 'Beta', 
            915 : 'Gamma', 
            916 : 'Delta', 
            917 : 'Epsilon', 
            918 : 'Zeta', 
            919 : 'Eta', 
            920 : 'Theta', 
            921 : 'Iota', 
            922 : 'Kappa', 
            923 : 'Lambda', 
            924 : 'Mu', 
            925 : 'Nu', 
            926 : 'Xi', 
            927 : 'Omicron', 
            928 : 'Pi', 
            929 : 'Rho', 
            931 : 'Sigma', 
            932 : 'Tau', 
            933 : 'Upsilon', 
            934 : 'Phi', 
            935 : 'Chi', 
            936 : 'Psi', 
            937 : 'Omega', 
            945 : 'alpha', 
            946 : 'beta', 
            947 : 'gamma', 
            948 : 'delta', 
            949 : 'epsilon', 
            950 : 'zeta', 
            951 : 'eta', 
            952 : 'theta', 
            953 : 'iota', 
            954 : 'kappa', 
            955 : 'lambda', 
            956 : 'mu', 
            957 : 'nu', 
            958 : 'xi', 
            959 : 'omicron', 
            960 : 'pi', 
            961 : 'rho', 
            962 : 'sigmaf', 
            963 : 'sigma', 
            964 : 'tau', 
            965 : 'upsilon', 
            966 : 'phi', 
            967 : 'chi', 
            968 : 'psi', 
            969 : 'omega', 
            977 : 'thetasym', 
            978 : 'upsih', 
            982 : 'piv', 
            8226 : 'bull', 
            8230 : 'hellip', 
            8242 : 'prime', 
            8243 : 'Prime', 
            8254 : 'oline', 
            8260 : 'frasl', 
            8472 : 'weierp', 
            8465 : 'image', 
            8476 : 'real', 
            8482 : 'trade', 
            8501 : 'alefsym', 
            8592 : 'larr', 
            8593 : 'uarr', 
            8594 : 'rarr', 
            8595 : 'darr', 
            8596 : 'harr', 
            8629 : 'crarr', 
            8656 : 'lArr', 
            8657 : 'uArr', 
            8658 : 'rArr', 
            8659 : 'dArr', 
            8660 : 'hArr', 
            8704 : 'forall', 
            8706 : 'part', 
            8707 : 'exist', 
            8709 : 'empty', 
            8711 : 'nabla', 
            8712 : 'isin', 
            8713 : 'notin', 
            8715 : 'ni', 
            8719 : 'prod', 
            8721 : 'sum', 
            8722 : 'minus', 
            8727 : 'lowast', 
            8730 : 'radic', 
            8733 : 'prop', 
            8734 : 'infin', 
            8736 : 'ang', 
            8743 : 'and', 
            8744 : 'or', 
            8745 : 'cap', 
            8746 : 'cup', 
            8747 : 'int', 
            8756 : 'there4', 
            8764 : 'sim', 
            8773 : 'cong', 
            8776 : 'asymp', 
            8800 : 'ne', 
            8801 : 'equiv', 
            8804 : 'le', 
            8805 : 'ge', 
            8834 : 'sub', 
            8835 : 'sup', 
            8836 : 'nsub', 
            8838 : 'sube', 
            8839 : 'supe', 
            8853 : 'oplus', 
            8855 : 'otimes', 
            8869 : 'perp', 
            8901 : 'sdot', 
            8968 : 'lceil', 
            8969 : 'rceil', 
            8970 : 'lfloor', 
            8971 : 'rfloor', 
            9001 : 'lang', 
            9002 : 'rang', 
            9674 : 'loz', 
            9824 : 'spades', 
            9827 : 'clubs', 
            9829 : 'hearts', 
            9830 : 'diams', 
            338 : 'OElig', 
            339 : 'oelig', 
            352 : 'Scaron', 
            353 : 'scaron', 
            376 : 'Yuml', 
            710 : 'circ', 
            732 : 'tilde', 
            8194 : 'ensp', 
            8195 : 'emsp', 
            8201 : 'thinsp', 
            8204 : 'zwnj', 
            8205 : 'zwj', 
            8206 : 'lrm', 
            8207 : 'rlm', 
            8211 : 'ndash', 
            8212 : 'mdash', 
            8216 : 'lsquo', 
            8217 : 'rsquo', 
            8218 : 'sbquo', 
            8220 : 'ldquo', 
            8221 : 'rdquo', 
            8222 : 'bdquo', 
            8224 : 'dagger', 
            8225 : 'Dagger', 
            8240 : 'permil', 
            8249 : 'lsaquo', 
            8250 : 'rsaquo', 
            8364 : 'euro'
        };
    }

usage example:

var text = "Übergroße Äpfel mit Würmern";
alert(escapeHtmlEntities (text));

result:

&Uuml;bergro&szlig;e &Auml;pfel mit W&uuml;rmern
  • Update1: Thanks bucabay again for the || - hint

  • Update2: Updated entity table with amp,lt,gt,apos,quot, thanks richardtallent for the hint

  • Update3(in 2014): Mathias Bynens created a lib called 'he', maybe it serves your need.

Solution 2:

All the other solutions suggested here, as well as most other JavaScript libraries that do HTML entity encoding/decoding, make several mistakes:

  • They don’t implement the full list of named character references that browsers support. For example, htmlDecode('&PrecedesSlantEqual;') should return '≼' (i.e. '\u227C').
  • They don’t support encoding astral symbols correctly. For example, htmlEncode('𝌆') should return something like &#x1D306; or &#119558;. If an implementation returns two separate entities instead (e.g. &#xD834;&#xDF06; or &#55348;&#57094;), it is broken.
  • They don’t support decoding astral symbols correctly. htmlDecode('&#x1D306;') should return '𝌆' and not '팆' (i.e. '\uD306').
  • They don’t implement the character reference overrides table listed in the HTML Standard. For example, htmlDecode('&#x80;') should return '€' (i.e. '\u20AC').
  • They should perform decoding in a single pass. For example, htmlDecode('&#x26;amp;') should return '&amp;', not &.

For a robust solution that avoids all these issues, use a library I wrote called he for this. From its README:

he (for “HTML entities”) is a robust HTML entity encoder/decoder written in JavaScript. It supports all standardized named character references as per HTML, handles ambiguous ampersands and other edge cases just like a browser would, has an extensive test suite, and — contrary to many other JavaScript solutions — he handles astral Unicode symbols just fine. An online demo is available.

Solution 3:

Using escape() should work with the character code range 0x00 to 0xFF (UTF-8 range).

If you go beyond 0xFF (255), such as 0x100 (256) then escape() will not work:

escape("\u0100"); // %u0100

and:

text = "\u0100"; // Ā
html = escape(text).replace(/%(..)/g,"&#x$1;"); // &#xu0;100

So, if you want to cover all Unicode charachacters as defined on http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html , then you could use something like:

var html = text.replace(/[\u00A0-\u00FF]/g, function(c) {
   return '&#'+c.charCodeAt(0)+';';
});

Note here the range is between: \u00A0-\u00FF.

Thats the first character code range defined in http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html which is the same as what escape() covers.

You'll need to add the other ranges you want to cover as well, or all of them.

Example: UTF-8 range with general punctuations (\u00A0-\u00FF and \u2022-\u2135)

var html = text.replace(/[\u00A0-\u00FF\u2022-\u2135]/g, function(c) {
   return '&#'+c.charCodeAt(0)+';';
});

Edit:

BTW: \u00A0-\u2666 should convert every Unicode character code not within ASCII range to HTML entities blindly:

var html = text.replace(/[\u00A0-\u2666]/g, function(c) {
   return '&#'+c.charCodeAt(0)+';';
});

Solution 4:

You can use:

function encodeHTML(str){
 var aStr = str.split(''),
     i = aStr.length,
     aRet = [];

   while (i--) {
    var iC = aStr[i].charCodeAt();
    if (iC < 65 || iC > 127 || (iC>90 && iC<97)) {
      aRet.push('&#'+iC+';');
    } else {
      aRet.push(aStr[i]);
    }
  }
 return aRet.reverse().join('');
}

This function HTMLEncodes everything that is not a-z/A-Z.

[Edit] A rather old answer. Let's add a simpler String extension to encode all extended characters:

String.prototype.encodeHTML = function () {
  return this.replace(/[\u0080-\u024F]/g, 
          function (v) {return '&#'+v.charCodeAt()+';';}
         );
}
// usage
log('Übergroße Äpfel mit Würmern'.encodeHTML());
//=> '&#220;bergro&#223;e &#196;pfel mit W&#252;rmern'