Best way to encode text data for XML in Java?

As others have mentioned, using an XML library is the easiest way. If you do want to escape yourself, you could look into StringEscapeUtils from the Apache Commons Lang library.

Very simply: use an XML library. That way it will actually be right instead of requiring detailed knowledge of bits of the XML spec.

Just use.

<![CDATA[ your text here ]]>

This will allow any characters except the ending

]]>

So you can include characters that would be illegal such as & and >. For example.

<element><![CDATA[ characters such as & and > are allowed ]]></element>

However, attributes will need to be escaped as CDATA blocks can not be used for them.

Try this:

String xmlEscapeText(String t) {
   StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
   for(int i = 0; i < t.length(); i++){
      char c = t.charAt(i);
      switch(c){
      case '<': sb.append("&lt;"); break;
      case '>': sb.append("&gt;"); break;
      case '\"': sb.append("&quot;"); break;
      case '&': sb.append("&amp;"); break;
      case '\'': sb.append("&apos;"); break;
      default:
         if(c>0x7e) {
            sb.append("&#"+((int)c)+";");
         }else
            sb.append(c);
      }
   }
   return sb.toString();
}

This has worked well for me to provide an escaped version of a text string:

public class XMLHelper {

/**
 * Returns the string where all non-ascii and <, &, > are encoded as numeric entities. I.e. "&lt;A &amp; B &gt;"
 * .... (insert result here). The result is safe to include anywhere in a text field in an XML-string. If there was
 * no characters to protect, the original string is returned.
 * 
 * @param originalUnprotectedString
 *            original string which may contain characters either reserved in XML or with different representation
 *            in different encodings (like 8859-1 and UFT-8)
 * @return
 */
public static String protectSpecialCharacters(String originalUnprotectedString) {
    if (originalUnprotectedString == null) {
        return null;
    }
    boolean anyCharactersProtected = false;

    StringBuffer stringBuffer = new StringBuffer();
    for (int i = 0; i < originalUnprotectedString.length(); i++) {
        char ch = originalUnprotectedString.charAt(i);

        boolean controlCharacter = ch < 32;
        boolean unicodeButNotAscii = ch > 126;
        boolean characterWithSpecialMeaningInXML = ch == '<' || ch == '&' || ch == '>';

        if (characterWithSpecialMeaningInXML || unicodeButNotAscii || controlCharacter) {
            stringBuffer.append("&#" + (int) ch + ";");
            anyCharactersProtected = true;
        } else {
            stringBuffer.append(ch);
        }
    }
    if (anyCharactersProtected == false) {
        return originalUnprotectedString;
    }

    return stringBuffer.toString();
}

}