Escaping HTML strings with jQuery

Since you’re using jQuery, you can just set the element’s text property:

// before:
// <div class="someClass">text</div>
var someHtmlString = "<script>alert('hi!');</script>";

// set a DIV's text:
$("div.someClass").text(someHtmlString);
// after: 
// <div class="someClass">&lt;script&gt;alert('hi!');&lt;/script&gt;</div>

// get the text in a string:
var escaped = $("<div>").text(someHtmlString).html();
// value: 
// &lt;script&gt;alert('hi!');&lt;/script&gt;