Encode HTML entities in JavaScript

You can use regex to replace any character in a given unicode range with its html entity equivalent. The code would look something like this:

var encodedStr = rawStr.replace(/[\u00A0-\u9999<>\&]/g, function(i) {
   return '&#'+i.charCodeAt(0)+';';
});

This code will replace all characters in the given range (unicode 00A0 - 9999, as well as ampersand, greater & less than) with their html entity equivalents, which is simply &#nnn; where nnn is the unicode value we get from charCodeAt.

See it in action here: http://jsfiddle.net/E3EqX/13/ (this example uses jQuery for element selectors used in the example. The base code itself, above, does not use jQuery)

Making these conversions does not solve all the problems -- make sure you're using UTF8 character encoding, make sure your database is storing the strings in UTF8. You still may see instances where the characters do not display correctly, depending on system font configuration and other issues out of your control.

Documentation

• String.charCodeAt - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/charCodeAt
• HTML Character entities - http://www.chucke.com/entities.html

The currently accepted answer has several issues. This post explains them, and offers a more robust solution. The solution suggested in that answer previously had:

var encodedStr = rawStr.replace(/[\u00A0-\u9999<>\&]/gim, function(i) {
  return '&#' + i.charCodeAt(0) + ';';
});

The i flag is redundant since no Unicode symbol in the range from U+00A0 to U+9999 has an uppercase/lowercase variant that is outside of that same range.

The m flag is redundant because ^ or $ are not used in the regular expression.

Why the range U+00A0 to U+9999? It seems arbitrary.

Anyway, for a solution that correctly encodes all except safe & printable ASCII symbols in the input (including astral symbols!), and implements all named character references (not just those in HTML4), use the he library (disclaimer: This library is mine). 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.

Also see this relevant Stack Overflow answer.