What is the best way to do HTML encoding and decoding in Apex?

I am programmatically building a HTML string in Apex and then saving it to a rich text field. The problem is that SalesForce is doing some HTML encoding on the string before it gets persisted which is making the string longer and causing a STRING_TOO_LONG error. What is the best way to do HTML encoding and decoding in Apex? See below for my attempt:

public String htmlEncode (String s) {  

    Map<String, String> htmlEncodingMap = new Map<String, String>();
    htmlEncodingMap.put('<', '&lt;');
    htmlEncodingMap.put('>', '&gt;');
    htmlEncodingMap.put('"', '&amp;quot;');
    htmlEncodingMap.put('&', '&amp;');

    for (String token : htmlEncodingMap.keySet()) {
        s = s.replace(token, htmlEncodingMap.get(token));
    }

    return s;
}

public String htmlDecode (String s) {  

    Map<String, String> htmlDecodingMap = new Map<String, String>();
    htmlDecodingMap.put('&lt;', '<');
    htmlDecodingMap.put('&gt;', '>');
    htmlDecodingMap.put('&amp;quot;', '"');
    htmlDecodingMap.put('&amp;', '&');

    for (String token : htmlDecodingMap.keySet()) {
        s = s.replace(token, htmlDecodingMap.get(token));
    }
    return s;
}

Answer

String s1 = 
   '"<Black&White>"';
String s2 = 
   s1.escapeHtml4();
System.debug(s2);
// Output:
// &quot;&lt;Black&amp;
// White&gt;&quot;

String s1 = 
   '&quot;&lt;Black&amp;White&gt;&quot;';
String s2 = 
   s1.unescapeHtml4();
System.assertEquals(
   '"<Black&White>"',
   s2);

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : LMcDonald , Answer Author : Andrew Fawcett