ASP.NET MVC2 -- How is Html.Encode() used?

Question

How is Html.Encode() used? What is its purpose, and how is it useful?

Answer 1

It HTML encodes the passed it text - this escapes things to avoid certain types of attacks, such as XSS.

For example:

Html.Encode("<script>alert('hi');</alert>")

Will result in:

<script>alert('hi');</script>

Being output to the page. This ensures that the script will not run.

Answer 2

It encodes tags found in text into their html equiv. For example if '&' was received it would be changed into '&'

Hope this helps.