How to Replace HTML Tags with Named Entities using JavaScript

The following is an excerpt from Javascript Cookbook. For when you want to paste example markup into a web page, and escape the markup—have the angle brackets print out rather than have the contents parsed.

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Use regular expressions to convert angle brackets (<>) into the named entities < and >:

var pieceOfHtml = "<p>This is a <span>paragraph</span></p>";
pieceOfHtml = pieceOfHtml.replace(/</g,"<");
pieceOfHtml = pieceOfHtml.replace(/>/g,">");
document.getElementById("searchResult").innerHTML = pieceOfHtml;

It’s not unusual to want to paste samples of markup into another web page. The only way to have the text printed out, as is, without having the browser parse it, is to convert all angle brackets into their equivalent named entities.

The process is simple with the use of regular expressions, using the regular expression global flag (g) and the String replace method, as demonstrated in the solution.