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Convert HTML special characters to and from entity codes for secure web rendering and code display.
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When you need to safely display HTML code snippets on a webpage or restore encoded text to parsable HTML, character escaping can often be a hassle. This tool is a dedicated solution for HTML entity encoding and decoding. HTML entity encoding is an escaping mechanism that converts special characters in HTML documents (such as <, >, &, ", etc.) into their corresponding &entity_name; or &#number; formats. It outputs safely encoded text or decodes back to the original HTML code, ensuring content is displayed correctly or transmitted securely in the browser.
Q: What is the difference between HTML encoding and URL encoding?
HTML encoding targets special characters in HTML documents (like < > & ") and escapes them into entities to ensure browsers parse and display them correctly. URL encoding targets reserved characters in URLs (like spaces, ?, #, /) and converts them into a percent-encoded format to ensure correct network transmission. They have different use cases and escaping rules.
Q: Why doesn't the code execute after HTML decoding?
Decoding only restores entities back to their original characters. For the code to execute on a page, it must be inserted into the DOM or used as innerHTML. This tool only provides character-level conversion.
This tool processes plain text input. Please do not paste content containing non-text elements like images or files. The conversion result depends on the integrity of the input text. For deeply nested or abnormally formatted non-standard HTML snippets, we recommend processing them in segments. Please note that while HTML entity encoding is a common method for preventing XSS attacks, it is not the only security measure. In production environments, it should be combined with other validation mechanisms.
For front-end development and security testing, using HTML entity encoding correctly is crucial. A typical scenario is displaying HTML code examples in a blog or documentation: the raw code <script>alert('test')</script> must be encoded as <script>alert('test')</script> to be safely displayed as text on the page without being executed. Conversely, encoded text retrieved from a database or API, such as <div>Content</div>, needs to be decoded to <div>Content</div> before it can be inserted into the DOM as HTML for rendering. Understanding this distinction between "displaying" and "executing" is key to securely handling user-generated content.
