# HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder

Encode and decode HTML entities

> Canonical page: https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/html-entity-encoder

- **Category:** Development

- **Keywords:** html, entity, encoder, decoder

## Overview

The HTML Entity Encoder/Decoder is a specialized utility designed to convert special characters into their corresponding HTML entity references and vice versa, ensuring your web content renders correctly across all browsers.

## Inputs

- **Text Input** (textarea): Enter text to encode/decode...
- **Operation** (select)

## When to use

- Preventing XSS attacks by sanitizing user-generated content before rendering it in the browser.
- Ensuring special characters like <, >, and & display correctly in HTML source code without breaking the document structure.
- Reverting encoded HTML strings back to their original readable text for editing or data processing purposes.

## How it works

- Paste your text into the input area.
- Select the 'Encode' operation to convert special characters into HTML entities or 'Decode' to revert them.
- Click the process button to generate the converted output instantly.

## Use cases

- Preparing code snippets for display on technical blogs or documentation sites.
- Sanitizing form inputs to prevent malicious script injection.
- Debugging legacy web pages that contain improperly escaped character sequences.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is an HTML entity?

An HTML entity is a piece of text that represents a reserved character in HTML, such as &lt; for the < symbol.

### Why should I encode HTML characters?

Encoding prevents the browser from interpreting special characters as actual HTML tags, which is essential for security and correct formatting.

### Can this tool handle large blocks of code?

Yes, you can paste large snippets of text or code into the input area for batch processing.

### Is this tool secure?

Yes, all processing happens locally in your browser, ensuring your data is not sent to any external server.

### Does it support all standard HTML entities?

Yes, the tool supports standard HTML character entity references for safe web display.

## Related tools

- [XML Escape / Unescape](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/xml-escape): Escape and unescape XML special characters (& < > " ') with optional numeric references, slash escaping, and CDATA wrapping
- [URL Encoder/Decoder](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/url-encoder): URL encode and decode strings
- [Base64 Encoder/Decoder](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/base64-encoder): Encode and decode Base64 strings
- [Base64URL Encoder/Decoder](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/base64url-encoder): Encode and decode Base64URL (URL-safe Base64 variant used by JWT/JWS/JWE), with conversions between standard and URL-safe Base64
- [Caesar Cipher](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/caesar-cipher): Encode, decode, and brute-force the Caesar cipher with any shift (1–25), or print all 25 candidate decodings.
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- [Atbash Cipher](https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/atbash-cipher): Encode and decode text using Atbash substitution cipher (reverses the alphabet)
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## Samples

- [HTML Viewer Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/html-viewer-samples): Sample HTML files (semantic page, form, landing page) for the in-browser HTML Viewer
- [HTML with Images Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/html-with-images): HTML source code samples with images for testing extraction
- [Hex/Unicode Encoding Format Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/text-hex-unicode-formats): Examples of hex (\xXX) and unicode (\uXXXX) escape sequence encoding formats
- [Distributed Tracing Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/distributed-tracing-samples): Comprehensive distributed tracing examples using Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, and other modern observability tools for microservices architecture

## Related content

- [Base, Radix, and Hex Encoding Tools](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/base-radix-and-hex-encoding-tools): Convert text and bytes across Base variants, arbitrary radices, hex, and web escapes while checking reversible byte preservation.
- [HTML Content Extraction, Cleanup, and Delivery](https://elysiatools.com/en/hubs/html-content-extraction-cleanup-and-delivery): Extract links, images, attributes, and tables from HTML, remove unwanted markup, and ship verified Markdown, PDF, or CSV outputs.