title: Spring 2.5.6/WPS 6.1: < in an input field gets turned into &lt; in the mapped field
body: <p>A friend of mine asked me to take a look at a portlet he was developing.
  The issue he's having is that when he enters a value like </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>1 &lt; 2 > 3</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>in an input field he gets </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>1 &lt; 2 &gt; 3</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>in the mapped String field.</p>
  
  <p>While a decent bit of his code is dubious I couldn't find any instances of him using a <code>.replace</code> function / setting <code>defaultHtmlEscape</code> to true.</p>
  
  <p>I did debug his portlet, and it's already changed before it even enters the Controller.
  I put a breakpoint in Springs dispatcherportlet and in the processAction it's already transformed.</p>
  
  <p><code>&gt;</code> only gets parsed to <code>&amp;lt;</code>  if it's preceded by <code>&lt;</code> so it is most likely an escaping issue because it gets handled as an html tag but I couldn't find any code influencing that. </p>
  
  <p>I'm not that familiar with Spring 2.5.6 (I use version 3), but I can't recall any similar issues.
  It might be an issue with websphere portal 6.1 but that would surprise me since I can't find any similar issues. (I'm going to try and make a similar scenario tomorrow).</p>
  
  <p>Any input would be appreciated.</p>
  
  <p>(spring 2.5.6-SEC02, WebSphere Portal 6.1 without the latest feature pack)</p>