VB.NET HtmlEncode, HtmlDecode Examples

Encode HTML strings with WebUtility.HtmlEncode and HtmlDecode. Use UrlEncode and UrlDecode.

HtmlEncode, Decode. HTML strings reserve certain characters, angle brackets, for markup. These chars must be encoded to exist in valid HTML.

Urls, meanwhile, require certain characters like spaces use url encoding (a code preceded by a percentage sign). With WebUtility—HtmlEncode and UrlEncode—we encode these ways.

HtmlEncode, HtmlDecode. This example handles HTML. The first string "hasBrackets" contains HTML tags, but we want to represent these as text in an HTML page.

HtmlEncode: This method takes a string that is not encoded (like hasBrackets) and changes angle brackets to entity encodings.

HtmlDecode: This takes entity encodings (like gt and lt) and replaces them with their original char values, the opposite of HtmlEncode.

VB.NET program that uses HtmlEncode, HtmlDecode Imports System.Net Module Module1 Sub Main() Dim input As String = "Hi 'friend'" ' Encode it. Dim result1 As String = WebUtility.HtmlEncode(input) ' Decode it back again. Dim result2 As String = WebUtility.HtmlDecode(result1) ' Write results. Console.WriteLine(result1) Console.WriteLine(result2) End Sub End Module Output Hi 'friend' Hi 'friend'

UrlEncode, UrlDecode. These methods work in a similar way as the HTML-encoding ones. We first use an Imports System.Net directive at the top.

UrlEncode: This takes a normally-formatted string and replaces certain characters, like spaces and slashes, with encoded values.

UrlDecode: This converts back an encoded url into a normal string. The two methods will round-trip data.

Tip: With UrlEncode, we should only pass part of the url, not the scheme, as http:// will be changed in an undesirable way.

VB.NET program that uses UrlEncode, UrlDecode Imports System.Net Module Module1 Sub Main() ' This string contains space and slash. Dim hasSpaces As String = "one two/three" ' Encode it as url. Dim result1 As String = WebUtility.UrlEncode(hasSpaces) Dim result2 As String = WebUtility.UrlDecode(result1) ' Example's results. Console.WriteLine(result1) Console.WriteLine(result2) End Sub End Module Output one+two%2Fthree one two/three

Performance. In my testing, the HtmlEncode and HtmlDecode methods are faster than approaches that use String Replace (which may cause excess allocations).Replace

However: The fastest way to encode HTML would be to make no changes. A system could simply not accept HTML chars.

A summary. With these encoding methods, we can process pages and urls in VB.NET to make them valid. This will prevent browsers from incorrectly rendering a site or any HTML interface.

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VB.NET HtmlEncode, HtmlDecode Examples

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