What characters do I need to escape in XML documents?

stackoverflow.com › questions › 1091945 › what-characters-do-i-need-to-escape-in-xml-documents

If you use an appropriate class or library, they will do the escaping for you. Many XML issues are caused by string concatenation.

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

Answer from Welbog on Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow

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escaping - What characters do I need to escape in XML documents? - Stack Overflow

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

2 of 10

118

^{New, simplified answer to an old, commonly asked question...}

Simplified XML Escaping ^{(prioritized, 100% complete)}

Always ^{(90% important to remember)}
- Escape < as < unless < is starting a <tag/> or other markup.
- Escape & as & unless & is starting an &entity;.
Attribute Values ^{(9% important to remember)}
- attr=" 'Single quotes' are ok within double quotes."
- attr=' "Double quotes" are ok within single quotes.'
- Escape " as " and ' as ' otherwise.
Comments, CDATA, and Processing Instructions ^{(0.9% important to remember)}
-  nothing has to be escaped but no -- strings are allowed.
- <![CDATA[ Within CDATA ]]> nothing has to be escaped, but no ]]> strings are allowed.
- <?PITarget Within PIs ?> nothing has to be escaped, but no ?> strings are allowed.
Esoterica ^{(0.1% important to remember)}
- Escape control codes in XML 1.1 via Base64 or Numeric Character References.
- Escape ]]> as ]]> unless ]]> is ending a CDATA section.
  ^{(This rule applies to character data in general – even outside a CDATA section.)}

FreeFormatter

freeformatter.com › xml-escape.html

Free Online XML Escape / Unescape Tool - FreeFormatter.com

A free online tool to escape or unescape XML documents and files

Fastly

fastly.com › documentation › reference › vcl › functions › strings › xml-escape

xml_escape | Fastly Documentation

Navigate to... ... Available inall subroutines. Escapes characters from a string using XML-style escape sequences.

People also ask

How do you escape data in XML?

To escape data in XML, you must replace any special characters with their corresponding escape sequence. For example, the < character should be replaced with <, and the > character should be replaced with >. This can be done manually or through programming language functions or XML editor tools.

testmu.ai

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XML Escape Free Online | Free online tool to convert plain XML ...

What is the difference between XML and HTML escape?

Although XML and HTML share the same set of special characters, they have slightly different escape sequences. While the single quote (') character in XML can only be escaped with ', it can be escaped with either ' or ' in HTML. In addition, a few additional escape sequences used in HTML but not in XML include those for non-breaking spaces.

testmu.ai

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XML Escape Free Online | Free online tool to convert plain XML ...

What is the XML format?

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language used to define and structure data in a human-readable and machine-readable format. It consists of elements, attributes, and text content enclosed in tags, which describe the structure and content of the data.

testmu.ai

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XML Escape Free Online | Free online tool to convert plain XML ...

Liquid Technologies

liquid-technologies.com › Reference › Glossary › XML_EscapingData.html

Escaping XML Data

Escaping XML Data Adding control characters ('<', '>', ''', '"', '&') into xml data can cause the parser to miss understand the resulting data. The solution is to escape the control characters so that the parser can interpret them correc

JSON Formatter

jsonformatter.org › xml-escape

Best XML Escape characters tool

Online XML Escape characters tool to escape ampersand,quote and all special characters.

GeeksforGeeks

geeksforgeeks.org › javascript › how-to-escape-characters-in-xml

How to Escape Characters in XML ? - GeeksforGeeks

July 23, 2025 - In this approach, we are using the replace() method with a regular expression to search for characters <, >, ", ', and & in the XML data and replace them with their respective XML entities (<, >, ", ', &). Example: The below ...

Advanced Installer

advancedinstaller.com › user-guide › xml-escaped-chars.html

XML escaped characters

For example, if you add an existing XML file or create a new one in your project and insert a special XML character in one of its elements, let's say < character, when you will build the project, Advanced Installer will automatically escape this character, replacing it with <. The result is that the XML document installed by the built package will contain the escaped character making possible the correct interpretation of the XML code.

Code Beautify

codebeautify.org › xml-escape-unescape

XML Escape and XML Unescape Online Tool

XML Unescape is easy to use tool to unescape XML and converts to plain XML to unescaped xml which helps to show xml text in XML in &ltpre&gt tag.

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Oracle

docs.oracle.com › cd › A97335_02 › apps.102 › bc4j › developing_bc_projects › obcCustomXml.htm

Using Special Characters in XML

When you use wizards to customize any string in your XML file, you can use the following special symbols: <, >, &, ', ".

Testmu

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XML Escape Free Online | Free online tool to convert plain XML content to escaped HTML.

As a result, the XML document might need to be correctly parsed. By substituting them with the corresponding escape sequence using XML Escape, the special characters in an XML document can be correctly interpreted by the XML parser.

ServiceNow Community

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Escaping special characters in XML - ServiceNow Community

June 1, 2021 - setStringParameter() -> to set simple string values such as sys_created_by which won't have special characters · XML reserved characters in the value are converted to the equivalent escaped characters.

Avajava

avajava.com › tutorials › lessons › how-do-i-escape-a-string-for-xml.html

How do I escape a String for XML? - Web Tutorials - avajava.com

This Java example shows how to escape a String for XML using StringEscapeUtils.

CodeItBro

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XML Escape Tool: Escape Special Characters in XML

2 hours ago - Escape special characters in XML strings. Convert , &, ", and ' to their entity equivalents for safe XML embedding.

Testmuai

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XML Escape Free Online | Free online tool to convert plain XML content to escaped HTML.

Tags, attributes, and other elements in an XML document are represented by these characters. XML Escape is necessary to avoid conflicts between an XML document's content and its syntax. For instance, the XML parser will interpret the special character "" as the start of a new tag rather than as a literal character if it appears in the content of an XML document.