entities 
Encode & decode HTML & XML entities with ease & speed.
Features
- 😇 Tried and true:
entities is used by many popular libraries; eg.
htmlparser2, the official
AWS SDK and
commonmark use it to process
HTML entities.
- ⚡️ Fast:
entities is the fastest library for decoding HTML entities (as of
April 2022); see performance.
- 🎛 Configurable: Get an output tailored for your needs. You are fine with
UTF8? That'll save you some bytes. Prefer to only have ASCII characters? We
can do that as well!
How to…
…install entities
npm install entities
…use entities
const entities = require("entities");
// Encoding
entities.escapeUTF8("& ü"); // "& ü"
entities.encodeXML("& ü"); // "& ü"
entities.encodeHTML("& ü"); // "& ü"
// Decoding
entities.decodeXML("asdf & ÿ ü '"); // "asdf & ÿ ü '"
entities.decodeHTML("asdf & ÿ ü '"); // "asdf & ÿ ü '"
Performance
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 |
FAQ
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 entities instead 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 entities support 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.
Acknowledgements
This library wouldn't be possible without the work of these individuals. Thanks
to
- @mathiasbynens for his explanations about
character encodings, and his library
he, which was one of the inspirations
for entities
- @inikulin for his work on optimized tries for
decoding HTML entities for the
parse5 project
- @mdevils for taking on the challenge of
producing a quick entity library with his
html-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
Security contact information
To report a security vulnerability, please use the
Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will
coordinate the fix and disclosure.
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