Bee Hive
HTML Escaper
Convert special characters to HTML entities and vice versa.
About HTML Escaper
Frequently Asked Questions
What is HTML escaping?
HTML escaping is the process of converting characters that are reserved in HTML (like <, >, &, ", and ') into their corresponding 'entity' versions (like < and >).
Why is HTML escaping important for security?
It is the primary defense against Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. By escaping user input, you ensure the browser treats it as text rather than executable code.
Which characters are commonly escaped?
The five most common characters are < (<), > (>), & (&), " ("), and ' (' or '). Many tools also escape additional symbols to be safe.
What is an HTML entity?
An HTML entity is a string that starts with an ampersand (&) and ends with a semicolon (;). It represents a character that has special meaning or isn't easily typeable.
When should I unescape HTML?
Unescaping is used when you need the original characters back, such as when retrieving data from a database to display it in a text editor or for further processing.
Does this tool handle all Unicode characters?
Yes, it can handle standard HTML entities and decimal/hexadecimal character references for any Unicode character.
Is there a difference between internal and external escaping?
Internal escaping (within your app) is for security. External escaping (for display) is to ensure characters like < and > are seen by the user rather than parsed by the browser.
Can I use this for XML?
Yes, the basic escaping rules for <, >, &, ", and ' are identical in XML, so this tool works perfectly for basic XML escaping tasks.
How does escaping affect SEO?
Escaping itself doesn't directly affect SEO, but ensuring your code snippets are correctly displayed improves user experience and page quality, which indirectly helps rankings.
Is there a limit to the text size?
There's no hard limit, but extremely large blocks of text (many megabytes) may slow down your browser since all processing is done locally.