How to insert <br /> tags into a java String

Question

I am trying to insert line break tags
into some text and displaying it on a web page. The < and > signs are being translated into < and > and the tags are showing up as text on the web page.

The text looks like this when I select it from the database (I've output it to SYSOUT):

version 12.4
service timestamps debug datetime
service timestamps log datetime
service password-encryption

Then I run it through this little filter:

public DevConfigs getDevConfig() {

    String config = devConfig.getConfig();

    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".$", Pattern.MULTILINE | Pattern.DOTALL);
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(config);
    String newConfig = matcher.replaceAll("<br />");

    devConfig.setConfig(newConfig);
    return this.devConfig;
}

Here is the web page (it's a Seam application using facelets):

<rich:tab label="Config">
    hello<br />
    there<br />
    #{devConfig.config}
</rich:tab>

And the page source looks like this:

hello<br />
there<br />
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;

version 12.&lt;br /&gt;
service timestamps debug datetim&lt;br /&gt;
service timestamps log datetim&lt;br /&gt;
service password-encryptio&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;

As you can see, my tag comes out as HTML characters and not as tags. What do I need to do to insert line break tags at the end of each line of text??

TDR

Answer 1

I don't write that much Java, especially nothing related to this, but I'm wondering, can this

<rich:tab label="Config">
    hello<br />
    there<br />
    #{devConfig.config}
</rich:tab>

not be written as this

<rich:tab label="Config">
    <![CDATA[
    hello<br />
    there<br />
    ]]>
    #{devConfig.config}
</rich:tab>

or simply:

<rich:tab label="Config">
    <![CDATA[
    hello
    there
    ]]>
    #{devConfig.config}
</rich:tab>

?

Answer 2

You need to disable the (default) HTML escaping of text. You can do that with h:outputText (or any RichFaces equivalent for that) with the escape attribute set to false.

<h:outputText value="#{bean.property}" escape="false" />

Answer 3

Maybe I didn't understand your question completely. But isn't it possible to replace simply the \n with <br />?

public DevConfigs getDevConfig() {

    String config = devConfig.getConfig();
    String newConfig = config.replace("\n", "<br />");
    devConfig.setConfig(newConfig);
    return this.devConfig;
}

I entered your text in this regex tester. This works fine, but if I choose Preg by Dialect... He replaces with <br />. Only with Javascript dialect it goes correct.
So maybe that is the same problem.

Oh. When you use .$ for your regex, you remove the last char from the line (when replacing).