Why was org.apache.common.lang3 StringEscapeUtils deprecated?

Question

I couldn't find any explanation why StringEscapeUtils was deprecated from Apache Lang3 v3.7.

https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/apidocs/org/apache/commons/lang3/StringEscapeUtils.html

What are we supposed to use now for HTML escaping/unescaping

Answer 1

The class was moved from package

org.apache.commons.lang3

to

org.apache.commons.text

You can replace the deprecated library easily:

In your build.gradle:

implementation 'org.apache.commons:commons-text:1.11.0'

And in your class using StringEscapeUtils make sure you import the correct class:

import org.apache.commons.text.StringEscapeUtils;

1.11.0 is currently the newest version (last checked February 20th 2024) but you can check the versions at maven: https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.commons/commons-text

Answer 2

Do below steps

• Add below dependency to your pom.xml (if using maven)
  <dependency>
     <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
     <artifactId>commons-text</artifactId>
     <version>1.4</version>
  <dependency>

• Import correct package as below
  import org.apache.commons.text.StringEscapeUtils;

• There is no such method unescapeHtml() in this class anymore, instead its two variations are available unescapeHtml3() and unescapeHtml4()
• Use unescapeHtml3() to unescape Html 3.0 characters
• Use unescapeHtml4() to unescape Html 4.0 characters

Answer 3

Per the deprecation listing, it was moved to a new project -- commons-text

Answer 4

From Commons-lang 3.6 release notes:

The Apache Commons Community has recently set up the Commons Text component as a home for algorithms working on strings. For this reason most of the string focused functionality in Commons Lang has been deprecated and moved to Commons Text. This includes:

o All classes in the org.apache.commons.lang3.text and the org.apache.commons.lang3.text.translate packages o org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils o org.apache.commons.lang3.RandomStringUtils o The methods org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils.getJaroWinklerDistance and org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils.getLevenshteinDistance

For more information see the Commons Text website:

http://commons.apache.org/text