http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/net/URI.html

I haven't checked this carefully but I believe that this will do what
you want:

URI uri = new URI( "insert crazy characters here" );

AFAIK there is no built-in way.  There are methods to encode
URLs (URIs) but they fall short.  This was discussed a month
ago in a different thread, with proper encoding code posted.
Look for the thread title containing "URL Encoding".  (I
saved a copy and can repost or email it if requested.)

You mentioned the address bar so it is likely you mean URL or
URI encoding, not HTML encoding.  But changing text to legal
HTML is easy.  You can use regular expressions (use global
and multi-line modes) on a String to:

  1) change all "&" to "&"
  2) change all "<" to "&lt;"
  3) change all ">" to "&gt;"

-Wayne

ASF's commons lang package has a class called StringEscapeUtils that
handles all that.
see http://commons.apache.org/lang/api-2.3/org/apache/commons/lang/StringEscapeUtils.html
Tzvika

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 14:43:27 -0800 (PST), tiewknvc9
<aotemp@hotmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
said :

see http://mindprod.com/products.html#AMPER  to convert & to &amp;
even in URLs.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/products1.html#ENTITIES to convert < to
&lt; and back.

You can also strinp tags such as <div>

tiewknvc9 a écrit :

What you're looking for is the class java.net.URLEncoder.
You must use this on every parameter value of the URL.

To encode strings into an HTML page, use the Jakarta commons
StringEscapeUtils class.

JB.

I faced this problem a few days ago and, as usual, Roedy Green's site
had the answer.
<http://mindprod.com/jgloss/urlencoded.html>

What you appear to want is a URL encoded string, not an HTML encoded
string.

Look at the java.net.UrlEncoder class.