What you need to know about inbuilt browser HTML sanitization

Application security is crucial for web applications, particularly in preventing XSS attacks, which occur when attackers execute malicious JavaScript on users' computers through untrusted HTML content. HTML sanitization is a recommended strategy for mitigating these vulnerabilities by removing unsafe content from HTML strings before they are processed. The experimental Sanitization API provides developers with a native browser feature to safely add potentially unsafe HTML to the DOM, offering a more efficient and up-to-date method compared to existing libraries. The API includes methods like sanitize, sanitizeFor, and setHTML, allowing for customizable sanitization configurations that align with modern HTML standards. While currently in the draft stage within the W3C incubator program, the Sanitization API is being tested in browsers like Chrome and Firefox, with the potential to become a standard tool for web developers, enhancing security without increasing bundle sizes in frameworks like React and Angular. However, it remains experimental and should not yet be used in production environments.