HTML Ampersand entity (&) is replaced with the ampersand symbol (&) when parsing

[aureliomarcoag]

• Are you running the latest version? Yes, 4.5.1
• Have you included sample input, output, error, and expected output?
• Have you checked if you are using correct configuration?
• Did you try online tool?
• Have you checked the docs for helpful APIs and examples?

Description

When parsing an XML node with an attribute that contains HTML-escaped symbols, the ampersand & symbol is parsed, but others aren't.

Input

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<node attr="some value with ampersand &amp; and other HTML symbols like &commat; and &equals;">
</node>

Code

import { XMLParser } from 'fast-xml-parser';
const parser = new XMLParser({ ignoreAttributes: false });
const raw = `<?xml version="1.0"?>
<node attr="some value with ampersand &amp; and other HTML symbols like &commat; and &equals;">
</node>`;
console.log(parser.parse(raw));

Output

The ampersand HTML entity is replaced with the actual Ampersand symbol, but other symbols such as @ and = aren't.

{
  '?xml': { '@_version': '1.0' },
  node: {
    '@_attr': 'some value with ampersand & and other HTML symbols like @ and ='
  }
}

expected data

No HTML entity should be parsed at all, and the attribute value should contain & instead of &.

{
  '?xml': { '@_version': '1.0' },
  node: {
    '@_attr': 'some value with ampersand & and other HTML symbols like @ and ='
  }
}

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• Yes
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[aureliomarcoag]

Oh my bad, it seems the XML spec also specifies an & entity and this behavior would therefore be correct. Please confirm and if so, feel free to close.