HTML Escape/Unescape Tool

Convert HTML special characters to entities and back with advanced options and security validation

Input HTML

Paste your HTML content here, load from file, or use a sample

Actions

Choose an operation to perform on your HTML

Escape Options

Customize how HTML characters are processed

Quote Encoding

Encode basic entities (< > &)

Encode extended entities (©, ®, etc.)

Encode as numeric entities

Preserve spaces (don't convert to )

Use hexadecimal numeric entities

Output

Escaped/unescaped HTML result from input

✨ Features

🔒 HTML Escaping

Convert special characters to safe HTML entities for secure rendering

🔓 HTML Unescaping

Convert HTML entities back to readable characters

⚙️ Advanced Options

Customize entity encoding with quotes, extended characters, and numeric entities

✅ Entity Validation

Validate existing entities and detect potential security issues

Why HTML Escaping is Critical for Web Security

Understanding the importance of proper HTML entity encoding for preventing XSS attacks and ensuring data integrity

HTML escaping is a fundamental security practice that prevents Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks by converting potentially dangerous characters into safe HTML entities. When user input contains HTML special characters like <, >, &, and quotes, proper escaping ensures they display as text rather than being interpreted as HTML code, protecting your application from malicious script injection.

XSS Attack Prevention

Properly escaped HTML prevents malicious scripts from executing in users' browsers. Converting <script> tags to <script> ensures they display as text rather than executing code, protecting against stored, reflected, and DOM-based XSS vulnerabilities.

User Content Safety

When displaying user-generated content like comments, reviews, or form inputs, HTML escaping ensures that special characters appear correctly without breaking page layout or allowing unauthorized code execution, maintaining a safe user experience.

Data Integrity

HTML escaping preserves the exact content of text data by ensuring special characters don't interfere with HTML parsing. This is crucial for displaying code snippets, XML data, or any content containing HTML-reserved characters while maintaining formatting integrity.

Template Engine Integration

Modern template engines like React JSX, Vue templates, and Angular automatically escape content, but understanding manual escaping helps when working with dangerouslySetInnerHTML, v-html, or legacy systems where automatic escaping isn't available.

International Character Support

Extended HTML entities support international characters and symbols (©, ®, €, accented letters) ensuring proper display across different browsers and character encodings, especially important for multilingual applications and legacy systems.

API Response Security

When APIs return HTML content or when building JSON responses containing HTML snippets, proper escaping prevents injection attacks and ensures data can be safely embedded in web pages without introducing security vulnerabilities or parsing errors.

Best Practices for HTML Escaping

Always escape user input before rendering in HTML context. Use context-aware escaping (HTML content vs attributes vs JavaScript strings require different approaches). Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) as additional protection. Validate and sanitize input at data entry points, then escape at output for defense in depth.