HTML Entity Encoder / Decoder

How this reads your output

The direction is chosen from what you paste, so entity-encoded text is decoded and plain text is encoded. Encoding uses named entities where a common one exists and numeric references otherwise, which is the safest combination for systems that mangle non-ASCII text. Decoding handles named entities alongside both decimal and hexadecimal numeric references.

What the results mean

Mode

Encode or decode, detected from the input. Text already containing entity references is decoded.

Named against numeric

Named entities are readable, numeric ones work everywhere. Only five characters strictly need escaping in HTML.

Characters affected

How much of the input changed. If encoding changed nothing, the text was already safe as written.

Common problems and fixes

Text is showing as & on the page

It has been escaped twice, which happens when already-escaped text is escaped again by a template that assumes it is raw. Escape at the point of output only, never when storing, and let your templating layer do it. Almost every modern template engine escapes by default, which is why manual escaping usually causes this.

Accented characters appear as question marks or boxes

That is a character encoding problem rather than an entity problem, and encoding to numeric references only hides it. Check the page declares UTF-8 in a meta charset tag and that the server sends a matching content type header. Fix that and the characters can stay as themselves.

Frequently asked questions

More in DevTools

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