---
title: "XHTML sanitization"
source: https://dev.pageseeder.com/reference/glossary/xhtml_sanitization.html
description: "This document specifies the XHTML elements and attributes allowed when sanitizing comment content submitted as application/xhtml+xml, including block elements like paragraphs and tables, inline elements like links and emphasis, and conversion of named entities to numerical equivalents for XML processing."
last_updated: 2026-09-08T14:07:33+10:00
tokens: ~235
---

# XHTML sanitization

When [comment](comment.md) content is submitted with `contenttype=application/xhtml+xml` the content is sanitized for security and consistency so that it only contains the following elements or attributes. Named entities such as ` ` are also converted to numerical entities or Unicode characters so the content can be processed easily as XML.

## Block elements

- \<p\>
- \<div\>
- \<h1\>
- \<h2\>
- \<h3\>
- \<h4\>
- \<h5\>
- \<h6\>
- \<ul\>
- \<ol start="" type=""\>
- \<li value=""\>
- \<blockquote\>
- \<dd\>
- \<dl\>
- \<dt\>
- \<hr\>
- \<pre class=""\>
- \<table\>
- \<caption\>
- \<table\>
- \<tbody\>
- \<td colspan="" rowspan=""\>
- \<tfoot\>
- \<th colspan="" rowspan=""\>
- \<thead\>
- \<tr\>

## Inline elements

- \<b\>
- \<i\>
- \<s\>
- \<u\>
- \<sup\>
- \<sub\>
- \<ins\>
- \<del\>
- \<strong\>
- \<code\>
- \<small\>
- \<br\>
- \<span\>
- \<em\>
- \<a href=""\>
- \<big\>
- \<strike\>
- \<tt\>