Convert invalid xml characters to HTML-Entity

Question

Hi,
How can i convert invalid XML characters like �,�,�, . . . to the HTML- Entity &auml &uuml &ouml ?
Is there any Method or class who can handle an input string and transform the invalid characters?
Or is there another way to mask this characters so that an XML parser do not throw an error when parsing the document.
Best regards,
Michael

Answer 1

Ok sorry, I'll give you more details what i want to do and where i have the problems.
I have the following xml string:
<font family="Times New Roman" size="14" color="#333333">This is a sample Text</font>
The xml-string can contain any characters because the content is from a text pane where the user can type in any characters.
I use the DOM parser to parse this input string to get the attributes and the text content.
And thats my problem, how can i make sure that this string wont throw any exceptions when i parse it with DOM?
Parsing the string with the follwing code:
public XMLElement parse(String sourceString)
        //create a new xml element
        XMLElement xmlElement = new XMLElement();
        //create a new document
        DocumentBuilder builder = build();
        //now parse the string into the document
        InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(sourceString.getBytes());
        Document document = null;
        try
            document = builder.parse(is);
        catch (SAXException e)
            System.out.println("SAXError while parsing the document");
            e.getMessage();
            //no valid document
            return null;
        catch (IOException e)
            System.out.println("IO Error while parsing the document");
            e.getMessage();
            //no valid document
            return null;
        //get the element
        org.w3c.dom.Element element = document.getDocumentElement();
        if (element != null)
            xmlElement.setNodeName(element.getNodeName());
            xmlElement.setNodeValue(element.getTextContent());
            //attributes defined?
            int length = element.getAttributes().getLength();
            //get the attributes, if defined
            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
                xmlElement.addAttribute(
                        element.getAttributes().item(i).getNodeName(),
                        element.getAttributes().item(i).getTextContent());
        return xmlElement;
    } XMLElement is my own class.
The builder:
private DocumentBuilder build()
        DocumentBuilder docBuilder = null;
        try
            DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            docBuilder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        catch(ParserConfigurationException pce)
            System.out.println("Error while creating an DocumentBuilder");
            pce.getMessage();
        //return the document builder
        return docBuilder;
    }Message was edited by:
heissm - spelling mistakes :(