HTML Entities: Complete Guide — Encoder/Decoder in 2026

HTML has a reserved set of characters: <, >, &, ", and '. HTML entities are how you represent these special characters safely.

Named Entities Reference

&    → &
<     → <
>     → >
"    → "
&apos;   → &apos;

Preventing XSS Attacks

XSS happens when user input is displayed without proper encoding:

// VULNERABLE:
<div>{{ user_comment }}</div>

// SAFE: HTML entities encode the script tag
<script>alert("XSS!")</script>

Security Best Practices

• Always encode user input — Never display untrusted content without encoding
• Use textContent instead of innerHTML — Always safe for user content
• Encode at display time, not storage time — Store raw, encode when displaying
• Use context-aware encoding — HTML, attributes, JS, URL, and CSS each need different encoding

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