When working with Alpine.js, displaying dynamic data in your HTML is a common requirement. Two important directives for this purpose are x-text and x-html. Both allow you to output data from your component state, but they behave differently and serve distinct use cases.

The x-text directive inserts plain text content into an element. It automatically escapes any HTML, which means that if the text contains HTML tags, they will be shown as plain text and not rendered as HTML. This makes x-text the safer option when you want to display user-generated content or any data that should not be interpreted as HTML. Using x-text helps you prevent issues like HTML injection, which could lead to security vulnerabilities.

In contrast, the x-html directive inserts the content as actual HTML. Any HTML tags in the bound data will be rendered and interpreted by the browser. This is useful when you want to output formatted content or include HTML elements dynamically. However, using x-html comes with risks: if you render untrusted data, you might expose your application to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Only use x-html when you are certain that the content is safe and trusted.

In summary, use x-text for safely displaying plain text from your state, and x-html when you intentionally want to render HTML markup from your data and you trust the source.