Converting html entities in AS3

I'm posting this here mainly because I always have to look it up. But maybe this post will help someone down the road.

Converting a string with html entities (such as &) to their respective symbols:

AS:

public function htmlUnescape(str:String):String
{
    return new XMLDocument(str).firstChild.nodeValue;
}

Converting a string so that it has html entities:

AS:

public function htmlEscape(str:String):String
{
    return XML( new XMLNode( XMLNodeType.TEXT_NODE, str ) ).toXMLString();
}

AS:

trace(htmlEscape("ham & eggs"));  // ham & eggs
trace(htmlUnescape("ham & eggs"));  // ham & eggs

UPDATE: AS2 versions by request.

AS:

function htmlUnescape(str:String):String
{
    return new XML(str).firstChild.nodeValue;
}

function htmlEscape(str:String):String
{
    return new XMLNode( 3, str ).toString();
}

24 Responses to “Converting html entities in AS3”

1. Patrick Burt Says:
   November 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

   I don't actually need to know this right now, but I will in about a week or so. Thanks m8.

2. bobnik Says:
   January 29th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

   Exactly what the doctor ordered. Thank you.

3. bob Says:
   March 21st, 2008 at 5:20 pm

   thanks!

4. Diabolo Says:
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 am

   Thank you!

5. Monokai Says:
   April 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 am

   This doesn't when your string contains "<" characters, any ideas?

6. Ash Says:
   April 23rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm

   Monokai: Technically the htmlUnescape function shouldnt work for strings with < and > in, since those characters arent valid inside an escaped string anyway.
   However, you can replace those manually:
   str = str.replace(/</g,"&lt;").replace(/>/g,"&gt;")

7. Monokai Says:
   April 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am

   Yes, that's true, they don't belong there. Thanks for your insight!

8. Bevan Says:
   August 28th, 2008 at 5:05 am

   Thanks for posting.
   I did come across one little problem when using Air, if you pass in a null string it crashes Air (the ADL when debugging).
   So I made a small change:

   public function htmlEscape(str:String):String
   {
   if(!str) return "";
   return XML( new XMLNode( XMLNodeType.TEXT_NODE, str ) ).toXMLString();
   }

9. nthitz Says:
   December 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

   Hmm this does exactly what I was looking for, but surely there has to be a better way rather than XML hax?

10. sam Says:
    January 19th, 2009 at 5:52 am

    This doesnt work if ur parsing HTML through it.

11. kwasi Says:
    April 3rd, 2009 at 2:04 am

    I have the following

    var unescapedHTML:String = new XMLDocument( html ).firstChild.nodeValue;
    /***/
    _text.htmlText = unescapedHTML;

    but for some reason the content of _text shows converted html entities therefor i'm seeing "blah blah blah"

    Using AS3, and _text is dynamically created as follows

    _text.type = TextFieldType.DYNAMIC;
    _text.selectable = false;
    _text.multiline = true;
    _text.wordWrap = true;
    _text.condenseWhite = true;

12. kwasi Says:
    April 3rd, 2009 at 2:09 am

    I seen the text with html tags (p)(font) blah blah (/font)(/p) "replaced with (), so browser doesn't render as HTML"

13. kwasi Says:
    April 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    goto (for full post).
    http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?p=867110#post867110

14. Nicolas Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 9:31 am

    tf.htmlText = new XML();

    P.S.
    advice - don't use uppercase in tag names

15. kwasi Says:
    May 20th, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Okay the solution you proposed now produces extra characters.
    <p><strong>full content comes here, </strong></p><p> </p><p>this is a new line in the document</p>

    this is what is saved in the database, and when rendered I see content wiht out the HTML tags but the are funny blocks with in the text e.g. you hello my name is [] blah blah [].

    using code

    /***/
    public function set html( html:String ):void {
    /***/
    _text.htmlText = new XML( new XMLDocument( html ).firstChild.nodeValue );
    }

16. Davide Says:
    July 21st, 2009 at 6:29 am

    Really thanks, you resolved me a tricky problem with combobox!
    Thaks again!
    Davide

17. plauska Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 9:28 am

    Hi man. I'm using AS2 and have the same problem. Would you help me out? I need a AS2 solution, pls...

18. Ash Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 9:56 am

    plauska: I've included the as2 versions in the post above. The functions are practically the same.

19. Sean Says:
    August 25th, 2009 at 1:06 am

    I was preparing to write a function to handle this, given that I need to handle all of the really odd HTML entities as well as the common ones, but then I stumbled upon this. Thanks a lot for a clever solution to this problem!

20. Johan Nyberg Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Thanks! Really needed this.

21. Casey Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    This won't work for ™

22. Jloa Says:
    December 21st, 2009 at 5:39 am

    U would rather write a static utils class for it.

23. ZREN Says:
    January 13th, 2011 at 5:30 pm

    Thanks, it’s very helpful for me.
    http://www.as3tutorial.com is very helpful for beginners.

24. codam Says:
    February 9th, 2011 at 9:21 am

    Here is a slight modification concerning AS2 code, otherwise gives a compilation error:

    /**
    * Encodes a html string using html entities.
    * @param str: the html sting to be encoded
    * @return a string html entities encoded
    */
    function htmlEntitiesEncode(str:String):String
    {
    return (new XMLNode( 3, str )).toString();
    }
    /**
    * Decodes a html string using html entities.
    * @param str: the html sting to be decoded
    * @return a string html entities decoded
    */
    function htmlEntitiesDecode(str:String):String
    {
    return (new XML(str)).firstChild.nodeValue;
    }

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