XML format
SVG
A vector image format that is genuine XML, and therefore both diffable and a security surface.
Because SVG is XML, an icon set can be searched, validated and version-diffed like any other document — a real advantage over binary image formats when you need to know what changed in a design system.
It is also the XML format most often accepted as a user upload, which makes it the one where XML's more dangerous features matter most: scripts, external references and entity expansion all travel inside a file that looks like an image.
Constraints that bite
- A standalone .svg must declare the SVG namespace on its root or it will not render.
- Inline SVG in HTML gets the namespace implicitly, so copy-pasting inline markup into a file often breaks it.
- User-supplied SVG can carry <script>, external references and entity expansion — sanitise before serving.
- .svgz is gzip-compressed SVG and must be served with Content-Encoding: gzip.
- viewBox, not width/height, is what makes an SVG scale.
- Root element
<svg>- Media type
image/svg+xml- Extensions
.svg, .svgz- Namespaces
http://www.w3.org/2000/svg
- XMLDir label
xml
Specification: SVG 2
A minimal valid document
Every example on this site is checked against the same parser the workspace uses, so what you see below is known to be well-formed.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24">
<path d="M4 12h16" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" fill="none"/>
</svg>Get started
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