How to encode a string containing HTML

Question

I have a string which contains HTML tags. This will be written to file so i need to encode it i guess to ISO-8859-1
Please note: i am using JDK1.2.2
My code is
bytes = new byte[(int)rs.getString(k).length()*4];
desc = new String(bytes, "ISO-8859-1");     
This does not work. The tags remain the same i.e. "<" and ">" are still there in the String. In what format should HTML be encoded and what am i doing wrong above?

Answer 1

or...
      * Encodes any special characters in the specified string with their
      * entity equivalents. 
      * @param  str  the original string
      * @return  the encoded string
     public static String encodeEntities(String str) {
          StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(str);
          // must replace '&' first
          char[] chars = {     // list of characters to replace
               '&',      '<',      '>',      '\'',      '\"'
          String[] ents = {     // list of entities to replace with
               "&",      "<",      ">",      "&apos;", """
          int len = Math.min(chars.length, ents.length);
          for(int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
               for(int j = 0; j < sb.length(); j++) {
                    if(sb.charAt(j) == chars) {
                         sb.replace(j, j+1, ents[i]);
          return sb.toString();
     * Decodes any entities in the specified string with their character
     * equivalents.
     * @param str the encoded string
     * @return the decoded string
     public static String decodeEntities(String str) {
          if(str == null) {
               return null;
          StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(str);
          String[] ents = {     // list of entities to replace
               "&",      "<",      ">",      "&apos;", """
          String[] chars = {     // list of characters to replace with
               "&",      "<",      ">",      "\'",      "\""
          int len = Math.min(chars.length, ents.length);
          int k = 0;
          for(int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
               for(int j = 0; j < sb.length(); j++) {
                    k = j + ents[i].length();
                    if(k >= sb.length()) {
                         break;
                    if(sb.substring(j, k).equals(ents[i])) {
                         sb.replace(j, k, chars[i]);
          return sb.toString();