In python I can construct a HTML string without worrying about escaping special characters like < or " by simply enclosing the string in triple quotes like:
html_string = """
<html>
<body>
<p>My text with "quotes" and whatnot!<p>
</body>
</html>
"""
Is there a similar way to do this in Java?
It can't be done in Java like in Python. However if you are using Eclipse go to Window->Preferences->Java->Editor->Typing The last check box is "Escape text when pasting into a String literal". Check that. Now when you paste when your cursor is between quotation marks it'll be escaped.
To echo benjismith's trick from a similar question, you can use an alternate character and replace them afterwards:
String myString = "using `backticks` instead of quotes".replace('`', '"');
I found it helpful when I was writing tests with JSON
String json = "{`kind`:`file`,`sid`:802,`rid`:5678 ,`attrs`:{`name`:`FILE-WG-2468`}}".replace('`', '"');
// vs
String json = "{\"kind\":\"file\",\"sid\":802,\"rid\":5678 ,\"attrs\":{\"name\":\"FILE-WG-2468\"}}";
heredocs is presently the item I most detest on java but this is a nice hack to reduce the pain. I will compose the correct string then use Intellij "replace within selection" to say ~ (used less frequently than '`') –
Amazonas No, but some tools escape it for you when you paste it, like eclipse.
For the purpose mentioned, Java Server Pages do the trick even without the tripple """'s :-)
Text Blocks feature arrived in Java 15. For details, see JEP 378: Text Blocks.
Enclose your material in a pair of triple QUOTATION MARK characters.
String html = """
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello, world</p>
</body>
</html>
""";
Your IDE has likely been updated to be savvy in assisting you with editing text blocks. For example, IntelliJ offers support.
In Java source code, double quote is a special character, used to declare string literals. You cannot have a double quote in a String literal without escaping it.
In general, I would try to avoid hard-coding strings like that in source code, particularly if I found myself doing it a lot - as you've noted, they're a pain to deal with as source and they might be quite likely to change, in which case you could do without recompiling. If you don't need to supply runtime parts to the text data, you could get away with something as simple as reading in the data from a properties file, or you could use a templating engine like Apache Velocity to keep the character data separate and still substitute variables at runtime - several of the examples in the linked user guide do exactly that with HTML.
heredoc's are a core part of my development process especially in testcases and configuration related logic. I was (fortunately) away from java for 6 years but coming back is v painful with this front and center. The trick above about replacing double quotes with something else is probably the least painful hack at this point. –
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