HtmlSpecialChars equivalent in Javascript?

Question

Apparently, this is harder to find than I thought it would be. And it even is so simple...

Is there a function equivalent to PHP\'s htmlspecialchars built into Javas

Answer 1

There is a problem with your solution code--it will only escape the first occurrence of each special character. For example:

escapeHtml('Kip\'s evil "test" code\'s here');
Actual:   Kip's <b>evil "test" code's here
Expected: Kip's <b>evil</b> "test" code's here

Here is code that works properly:

function escapeHtml(text) {
  return text
      .replace(/&/g, "&")
      .replace(//g, ">")
      .replace(/"/g, """)
      .replace(/'/g, "'");
}

---

Update

The following code will produce identical results to the above, but it performs better, particularly on large blocks of text (thanks jbo5112).

function escapeHtml(text) {
  var map = {
    '&': '&',
    '<': '<',
    '>': '>',
    '"': '"',
    "'": '''
  };
  
  return text.replace(/[&<>"']/g, function(m) { return map[m]; });
}