The 'entities' npm package is a library that helps with encoding and decoding HTML entities. It is useful for dealing with HTML data in text form and can be used to prevent XSS attacks by sanitizing input or output.
Encode HTML Entities
Encodes special characters in a string to their corresponding HTML entities. Useful for displaying text on a webpage without it being interpreted as HTML.
"require('entities').encodeHTML('<div>Hello & welcome!</div>');"Decode HTML Entities
Decodes HTML entities back to their original characters. This is useful for processing text that contains HTML entities and converting them to their readable form.
"require('entities').decodeHTML('<div>Hello & welcome!</div>');"Encode XML Entities
Similar to encoding HTML entities, but specifically for XML, which has a smaller set of entities.
"require('entities').encodeXML('<note>Priority & importance</note>');"Decode XML Entities
Decodes XML entities back to their original characters, which is useful when working with XML data.
"require('entities').decodeXML('<note>Priority & importance</note>');"The 'he' package is an HTML entity encoder/decoder written in JavaScript. It is robust and handles a large number of character references. It is similar to 'entities' but has a different API and additional options for encoding.
This package is another alternative for encoding and decoding HTML entities. It provides a similar set of functionalities as 'entities' and is often used for the same purposes in different projects.
Encode & decode HTML & XML entities with ease & speed.
entities is used by many popular libraries; eg.
htmlparser2, the official
AWS SDK and
commonmark use it to
process HTML entities.entities is the fastest library for decoding HTML entities (as
of April 2022); see performance.entitiesnpm install entities
entitiesconst entities = require("entities");
// Encoding
entities.escapeUTF8("& ü"); // "&#38; ü"
entities.encodeXML("& ü"); // "&#38; ü"
entities.encodeHTML("& ü"); // "&#38; ü"
// Decoding
entities.decodeXML("asdf & ÿ ü '"); // "asdf & ÿ ü '"
entities.decodeHTML("asdf & ÿ ü '"); // "asdf & ÿ ü '"
This is how entities compares to other libraries on a very basic benchmark
(see scripts/benchmark.ts, for 10,000,000 iterations; lower is better):
| Library | Version | decode perf | encode perf | escape perf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| entities | 3.0.1 | 1.418s | 6.786s | 2.196s |
| html-entities | 2.3.2 | 2.530s | 6.829s | 2.415s |
| he | 1.2.0 | 5.800s | 24.237s | 3.624s |
| parse-entities | 3.0.0 | 9.660s | N/A | N/A |
What methods should I actually use to encode my documents?
If your target supports UTF-8, the escapeUTF8 method is going to be your best
choice. Otherwise, use either encodeHTML or encodeXML based on whether
you're dealing with an HTML or an XML document.
You can have a look at the options for the encode and decode methods to see
everything you can configure.
When should I use strict decoding?
When strict decoding, entities not terminated with a semicolon will be ignored. This is helpful for decoding entities in legacy environments.
Why should I use
entitiesinstead of alternative modules?
As of April 2022, entities is a bit faster than other modules. Still, this is
not a very differentiated space and other modules can catch up.
More importantly, you might already have entities in your dependency graph
(as a dependency of eg. cheerio, or htmlparser2), and including it directly
might not even increase your bundle size. The same is true for other entity
libraries, so have a look through your node_modules directory!
Does
entitiessupport tree shaking?
Yes! entities ships as both a CommonJS and a ES module. Note that for best
results, you should not use the encode and decode functions, as they wrap
around a number of other functions, all of which will remain in the bundle.
Instead, use the functions that you need directly.
This library wouldn't be possible without the work of these individuals. Thanks to
he, which was one of the
inspirations for entitiesparse5 projecthtml-entities library.
entities would be quite a bit slower if there wasn't any competition.
Right now entities is on top, but we'll see how long that lasts!License: BSD-2-Clause
To report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.
entities for enterpriseAvailable as part of the Tidelift Subscription
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Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the open source
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FAQs
Encode & decode XML and HTML entities with ease & speed
The npm package entities receives a total of 56,748,673 weekly downloads. As such, entities popularity was classified as popular.
We found that entities demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 0 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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