java - Why does Transformer return &lt and &gt instead of < and >? -

trnsformer.transform(domsource, streamresult); 

input in domsource contains many <br> tags, instead &gt , &lt instead of < , > <br> return &lt br &gt

i know &lt &gt equivalent <>. how can make transformer class change encoding , return <br> instead ?

xml creator

public class creatxml  {     public static void main(string[] args){    try {     file article = new file("article.txt");     scanner scan = new scanner (article);     stringbuilder str = new stringbuilder();     while (scan.hasnext())     {        str.append(scan.nextline());       str.append("<br>");     }     documentbuilderfactory factory = documentbuilderfactory.newinstance();     documentbuilder builder = factory.newdocumentbuilder();     document doc = builder.newdocument();      element body  = doc.createelement("div");     doc.appendchild(body);      attr classattr = doc.createattribute("class");     classattr.setvalue("code");     body.setattributenode(classattr);      element p = doc.createelement("p");     p.appendchild(doc.createtextnode(str.tostring()));     body.appendchild(p);      transformerfactory transfatory = transformerfactory.newinstance();     transformer transformer = transfatory.newtransformer();     domsource dom = new domsource(doc);      stringwriter writer = new stringwriter();     streamresult result = new streamresult(writer);     transformer.transform(dom, result);     system.out.println(writer.tostring());    }catch (exception e){e.printstacktrace();}     } } 

input sample

<br>this input sample<br>

output

<?xml [stuff] ><div><p>&lt;br&gt;this input sample&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;</p></div>

the problem lies here:

p.appendchild(doc.createtextnode(str.tostring())); 

you don't have <br> elements in document. have single <p> element textual content contains occurrences of 4 characters <, b, r, , >. in accordance well-formed xml, characters being encoded in manner you're seeing.

in other words, createtextnode not create xml elements.

instead of stringbuilder, you'll need create separate text nodes , element nodes:

while (scan.hasnext()) {     p.appendchild(doc.createtextnode(scan.nextline()));     p.appendchild(doc.createelement("br")); }