Escaping XML special characters in Java

If you do not wish to bring in an additional dependency, you can use the following function, which makes use of the built-in W3C XML API, to escape XML special characters in your Java program.

public String escapeXml(String target) throws Exception {
	Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().newDocument();
	Text text = document.createTextNode(target);
	Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
	DOMSource source = new DOMSource(text);
	StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
	StreamResult result = new StreamResult(writer);
	transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
	transformer.transform(source, result);
	return writer.toString();
}