JavaScript: decode a string in browser which is html-entity-encoded

decodeEntities.js

// originally from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5796718/html-entity-decode/27385169
function(str) {
  var element = document.createElement('div');
  // regular expression matching HTML entities
  var entity = /&(?:#x[a-f0-9]+|#[0-9]+|[a-z0-9]+);?/ig;
  function decodeHTMLEntities() {
    // find and replace all the html entities
    str = str.replace(entity, function(m) {
      element.innerHTML = m;
      return element.textContent;
    });
    // reset the value
    element.textContent = '';
    return str;
  }
  return decodeHTMLEntities(str);
}