Convert tags to html entities

Question

Is it possible to convert html tags to html entities using javascript/jquery using any way possible such as regex or some other way. If yes, then how?

Example:

<div> should be converted to <div>

Note: I am not talking about server-side languages.

Answer 1

Try this function for the HTML special characters:

function htmlencode(str) {
    return str.replace(/[&<>"']/g, function($0) {
        return "&" + {"&":"amp", "<":"lt", ">":"gt", '"':"quot", "'":"#39"}[$0] + ";";
    });
}

Answer 2

As you tagged with jquery, a jQuery-powered solution should work for you:

$("<div>").text("<div>bleh</div>whatever").html()

Replace the argument to the text-method with whatever markup you want to escape.