he

What is he?

The 'he' npm package is a robust HTML entity encoder/decoder written in JavaScript. It supports all standardized named character references, numeric character references, and it can encode/decode any arbitrary data in UTF-8 encoding. It is designed to work in all modern web browsers and can be used with Node.js.

What are he's main functionalities?

Encode HTML entities

This feature allows you to encode text into HTML entities, which is useful for preventing XSS attacks by sanitizing user input before inserting it into the DOM.

const he = require('he');
const encoded = he.encode('Schrödinger’s cat & Co.');
console.log(encoded); // 'Schrödinger’s cat & Co.'

Decode HTML entities

This feature allows you to decode HTML entities back into their original form, which is useful for displaying encoded content as plain text.

const he = require('he');
const decoded = he.decode('Schrödinger’s cat & Co.');
console.log(decoded); // 'Schrödinger’s cat & Co.'

Escape XML entities

This feature allows you to escape XML entities, which is similar to encoding but specifically for XML content.

const he = require('he');
const escaped = he.escape('Schrödinger’s cat & Co.');
console.log(escaped); // 'Schrödinger’s cat & Co.'

Unescape XML entities

This feature allows you to unescape XML entities, which is the reverse process of escaping and is used to convert XML-encoded content back to its original form.

const he = require('he');
const unescaped = he.unescape('Schrödinger’s cat & Co.');
console.log(unescaped); // 'Schrödinger’s cat & Co.'

Other packages similar to he

entities

Similar to 'he', 'entities' is a package for encoding and decoding HTML/XML entities. It offers a streaming interface, which 'he' does not, potentially making it more suitable for processing large amounts of data.

html-entities

This package also provides methods for encoding and decoding HTML entities. It has a slightly different API and may offer additional functions for handling named entities, which could be preferred in certain use cases over 'he'.

escape-html

While 'escape-html' is more limited in scope, focusing only on escaping strings for safe insertion into HTML content, it is a lightweight alternative to 'he' for projects that only require this specific functionality.