How would you parse xml in java if the content of a tag contains > or <?

Currently, I'm using XMLInputFactory and XMLEventReader to parse XML from a rss data feed. In the description, it contains html tags in the using of > and <. Java reads this as actual tags and it thinks that the end of the description, so it cuts off and goes to the next element. How can I exclude the tags from parsing?

I don't use the pull parser (XMLEventReader) much, but I believe that, as with the SAX parser, it can report a text node as a sequence of Characters events, rather than as a single event, and it's up to the application to concatenate them. The most likely place the parser is likely to choose to split the content is at entity boundaries, to avoid doing bulk copying of character data when expanding entities.

You could temporary replace every > and < tags by a specific unique label you know. Then, do your parsing, and replace them with the > and < tags again when you are done with your parsing, like in the following code.

String original = "<container>>This< is a >test<</container>";
String newStr = original.replace(">", "_TMP_CHARACTER_G_").replace("<", "_TMP_CHARACTER_L_");
System.out.println(original + "\n" + newStr);
// Print <container>>This< is a >test<</container>
// and <container>_TMP_CHARACTER_G_This_TMP_CHARACTER_L_ is a _TMP_CHARACTER_G_test_TMP_CHARACTER_L_</container>
        
// [Do your parsing here]
        
String theTagYouWant = newStr;
String theConvertedTag = theTagYouWant.replace("_TMP_CHARACTER_G_", ">").replace("_TMP_CHARACTER_L_", "<");
System.out.println(theConvertedTag);
// Print the original String <container>>This< is a >test<</container>