HTML Entity Encoder

What are HTML Entities?

HTML Entities are special codes used to represent characters that have special meaning in HTML or cannot be directly typed. They allow you to display characters like <, >, &, and quotes without the browser interpreting them as HTML code.

HTML entities are essential for:

  • Security (XSS Prevention): Escaping user input to prevent cross-site scripting attacks
  • Displaying Special Characters: Showing HTML tags as text, mathematical symbols, or special characters
  • Character Encoding: Representing characters that aren't on your keyboard
  • Code Examples: Displaying code snippets in documentation or tutorials

Common HTML entities include &amp; for &, &lt; for <, &gt; for >, &quot; for ", and &#039; for '. Escaping HTML converts these special characters to their entity codes, while unescaping converts them back to regular characters. This is crucial for web security and proper content display.

Frequently Asked Questions

HTML entities use codes like &amp; and &lt; to represent characters in HTML content. URL encoding uses percent signs like %20 and %3F to represent characters in URLs. They serve different purposes.
Always escape HTML when displaying user-generated content to prevent XSS attacks. Also escape HTML when you want to display HTML tags as text rather than having them rendered.
Yes, you can use numeric entities like &#60; for &lt; or &#38; for &. These work in all browsers and are useful when you don't know the named entity.