Unescape HTML entities in Javascript?

Question

I have some Javascript code that communicates with an XML-RPC backend. The XML-RPC returns strings of the form:

Answer 1

var htmlEnDeCode = (function() {
    var charToEntityRegex,
        entityToCharRegex,
        charToEntity,
        entityToChar;

    function resetCharacterEntities() {
        charToEntity = {};
        entityToChar = {};
        // add the default set
        addCharacterEntities({
            '&'     :   '&',
            '>'      :   '>',
            '<'      :   '<',
            '"'    :   '"',
            '''     :   "'"
        });
    }

    function addCharacterEntities(newEntities) {
        var charKeys = [],
            entityKeys = [],
            key, echar;
        for (key in newEntities) {
            echar = newEntities[key];
            entityToChar[key] = echar;
            charToEntity[echar] = key;
            charKeys.push(echar);
            entityKeys.push(key);
        }
        charToEntityRegex = new RegExp('(' + charKeys.join('|') + ')', 'g');
        entityToCharRegex = new RegExp('(' + entityKeys.join('|') + '|&#[0-9]{1,5};' + ')', 'g');
    }

    function htmlEncode(value){
        var htmlEncodeReplaceFn = function(match, capture) {
            return charToEntity[capture];
        };

        return (!value) ? value : String(value).replace(charToEntityRegex, htmlEncodeReplaceFn);
    }

    function htmlDecode(value) {
        var htmlDecodeReplaceFn = function(match, capture) {
            return (capture in entityToChar) ? entityToChar[capture] : String.fromCharCode(parseInt(capture.substr(2), 10));
        };

        return (!value) ? value : String(value).replace(entityToCharRegex, htmlDecodeReplaceFn);
    }

    resetCharacterEntities();

    return {
        htmlEncode: htmlEncode,
        htmlDecode: htmlDecode
    };
})();

This is from ExtJS source code.