Convert HTML Characters to Text in Java: Standard Library Tutorial

When working with Java, it is common to come across HTML characters that need to be converted to plain text. Fortunately, the Java Standard Library includes a class called "StringEscapeUtils" that can handle this task for us.

To use StringEscapeUtils, we first need to import it into our project:

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils;

Once imported, we can use the "unescapeHtml4" method to convert HTML characters to plain text. Here is an example:

String htmlString = "This is an example <b>HTML</b> string.";
String plainText = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(htmlString);
System.out.println(plainText);

In this example, the "htmlString" variable contains an HTML string with a bold tag. The "unescapeHtml4" method is then called on this string, which returns the plain text version of the string. The resulting plain text is then printed to the console.

It is important to note that StringEscapeUtils can also handle other types of escaping, such as URL encoding and JavaScript escaping. The library is a useful tool to have in your Java programming arsenal.