How to disable/avoid Ampersand-Escaping in Java-XML?

Question

I want to create a XML where blanks are replaced by  . But the Java-Transformer escapes the Ampersand, so that the output is  

Answer 1

Try to use

element.appendChild (document.createCDATASection (" "));

instead of

element.setTextContent(...);

You'll get this in your xml: It may work if I understand correctly what you're trying to do.

Answer 2

Set the text content directly to the character you want, and the serializer will escape it for you if necessary:

element.setTextContent("\u00A0");

Answer 3

The solution is very funny:

Node disableEscaping = document.createProcessingInstruction(StreamResult.PI_DISABLE_OUTPUT_ESCAPING, "&");
 Element element = document.createElement("element");
 element.setTextContent(" ");
 document.appendChild(disableEscaping );
 document.appendChild(element);
Node enableEscaping = document.createProcessingInstruction(StreamResult.PI_ENABLE_OUTPUT_ESCAPING, "&");
document.appendChild(enableEscaping )

So basically you need put your code between escaping element.

Answer 4

As addon to forty-two's answer:

If, like me, you're trying the code in a non-patched Eclipse IDE, you're likely to see some weird A's appearing instead of the non-breaking space. This is because of the encoding of the console in Eclipse not matching Unicode (UTF-8).

Adding -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to your eclipse.ini should solve this.

Cheers, Wim