I have to remove some special characters and ">" in XML string.
Load XML throwing Data root level error.
public T ConvertXmlFromByte<T>(byte[] data)
{
T model = null;
try
{
if (data != null)
{
XmlDocument xmlDoc = null;
XmlSerializer serializer = null;
string xml = "";
xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xml = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);
//xml = Regex.Replace(xml, #"[^&;:()a-zA-Z0-9\=./><_-~-]", string.Empty);
xmlDoc.LoadXml(xml);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
_customLogger.Error(ex.Message, ex);
}
return model;
}
Below is my XML string:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?><Test xmlns="https://cdn.Test.go.cr/xml-schemas/v4.3/test" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
</Test>>
You are trying to load the file as XML and remove what appears to be an extra character.
The problem is, that this extra character means that the text is not valid XML! Therefore, you can't load it using an XML parser because it is not valid so this is why you get this exception.
So you must therefore treat it as a string, find the offending characters and modify the string and save it again.
So you can use a simple Regex to do this. You don't really state the conditions, so I assume that anytime a double '>>' appears it is incorrect. But you need to amend as appropriate.
string contents = File.ReadAllText(#"c:\path\file.xml");
string output = Regex.Replace(contents, ">>", ">");
File.WriteAllText(#"c:\path\output.xml", output);
Suppose we have this code:
string actualvalue = "<a>";
string abc = "<firstnode><secondnode abc=\""+ actualvalue + "\"></secondnode></firstnode>";
XElement item2 = XElement.Parse(abc);
foreach (var item in item2.Descendants("secondnode"))
{
string aftergettingitfromXlement = item.Attribute("abc").Value;
///so aftergettingitfromXlement = "<a>" which is not correct i want to have actual value which is encoded
}
Any idea how can I get the actual value, I don't want to encode again. Why is the encoding lost?
Try this instead:
string actualvalue = "<a>";
The XDocument implemenation assumes that the value in your xml string is escaped.
To read more about escpae characters in xml: What characters do I need to escape in XML documents?
To do a general replace of ampersands in a string you could write:
string actualvalue = "<a>";
actualvalue = actualvalue.Replace("&", "&");
When I load XML files with English tags everything works fine but when I try to load an XML file with tags written in the Greek Language nothing works, why is this happening?
Do I have to change the encoding somewhere in the code?
This is the code I use:
XmlDocument xdoc = new XmlDocument();
xdoc.Load(filename);
XmlNode root = xdoc.DocumentElement;
if (root.HasChildNodes)
{
for (int i = 0; i < root.ChildNodes.Count; i++)
{
richTextBox1.AppendText(root.ChildNodes[i].InnerXml + "\n");
}
}
I downloaded your file and deserialized/displayed succesfully.
public class ΦΑΡΜΑΚΑ
{
public string A;
public string ΦΑΡΜ_ΑΓΩΓΗ;
public string ΧΟΡΗΓΗΣΗ;
public string ΛΗΞΗΣ;
public string ΑMKA;
}
XmlSerializer xml = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ΦΑΡΜΑΚΑ[]),new XmlRootAttribute("dataroot"));
ΦΑΡΜΑΚΑ[] array = (ΦΑΡΜΑΚΑ[])xml.Deserialize(File.Open(#"D:\Downloads\bio3.xml", FileMode.Open));
richTextBox1.Text = String.Join(Environment.NewLine, array.Select(x => x.ΦΑΡΜ_ΑΓΩΓΗ));
Make sure your rich text box has its multiline property set to true. Default is true, but you can may have changed it. Also, instead of \n use Environment.NewLine.
Also .InnerText will get you the value without the tags. InnerXml gives you the markup as well.
i have the string which is a part of an xml.
a<b>b</b>c<i>d</i>e<b>f</b>g
the problem is that i want to extract from the string the parts that are not inside any tags.
so i need to extract the string"aceg" from this string and leave the characters "bdf"
how can this be done?
Edit:
this was a part of an xml
let asume its
<div>a<b>b</b>c<i>d</i>e<b>f</b>g</div>
now its a valid xml :)
The following regular expression will remove all tags from the string:
Regex.Replace("a<b>b</b>c<i>d</i>e<b>f</b>g", "<[^>]+>", string.Empty);
That string is not valid XML.
However, assuming you had a valid XML string, then you could do something like this:
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string contents = string.Empty;
XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
document.LoadXml("<outer>a<b>b</b>c<i>d</i>e<b>f</b>g</outer>");
foreach(XmlNode child in document.DocumentElement.ChildNodes)
{
if (child.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
{
contents += child.InnerText;
}
}
Console.WriteLine(contents);
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
This will print out the string "bdf"
Following from #Stoo's answer you should be able to omit the tag contents as well with something like this:
Regex.Replace("a<b>b</b>c<i>d</i>e<b>f</b>g", "<[^>]+>[^<]+</[^>]+>", string.Empty);
Is there any C# function which could be used to escape and un-escape a string, which could be used to fill in the content of an XML element?
I am using VSTS 2008 + C# + .Net 3.0.
EDIT 1: I am concatenating simple and short XML file and I do not use serialization, so I need to explicitly escape XML character by hand, for example, I need to put a<b into <foo></foo>, so I need escape string a<b and put it into element foo.
SecurityElement.Escape(string s)
public static string XmlEscape(string unescaped)
{
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlNode node = doc.CreateElement("root");
node.InnerText = unescaped;
return node.InnerXml;
}
public static string XmlUnescape(string escaped)
{
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlNode node = doc.CreateElement("root");
node.InnerXml = escaped;
return node.InnerText;
}
EDIT: You say "I am concatenating simple and short XML file and I do not use serialization, so I need to explicitly escape XML character by hand".
I would strongly advise you not to do it by hand. Use the XML APIs to do it all for you - read in the original files, merge the two into a single document however you need to (you probably want to use XmlDocument.ImportNode), and then write it out again. You don't want to write your own XML parsers/formatters. Serialization is somewhat irrelevant here.
If you can give us a short but complete example of exactly what you're trying to do, we can probably help you to avoid having to worry about escaping in the first place.
Original answer
It's not entirely clear what you mean, but normally XML APIs do this for you. You set the text in a node, and it will automatically escape anything it needs to. For example:
LINQ to XML example:
using System;
using System.Xml.Linq;
class Test
{
static void Main()
{
XElement element = new XElement("tag",
"Brackets & stuff <>");
Console.WriteLine(element);
}
}
DOM example:
using System;
using System.Xml;
class Test
{
static void Main()
{
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement element = doc.CreateElement("tag");
element.InnerText = "Brackets & stuff <>";
Console.WriteLine(element.OuterXml);
}
}
Output from both examples:
<tag>Brackets & stuff <></tag>
That's assuming you want XML escaping, of course. If you're not, please post more details.
Thanks to #sehe for the one-line escape:
var escaped = new System.Xml.Linq.XText(unescaped).ToString();
I add to it the one-line un-escape:
var unescapedAgain = System.Xml.XmlReader.Create(new StringReader("<r>" + escaped + "</r>")).ReadElementString();
George, it's simple. Always use the XML APIs to handle XML. They do all the escaping and unescaping for you.
Never create XML by appending strings.
And if you want, like me when I found this question, to escape XML node names, like for example when reading from an XML serialization, use the easiest way:
XmlConvert.EncodeName(string nameToEscape)
It will also escape spaces and any non-valid characters for XML elements.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.securityelement.escape%28VS.80%29.aspx
Another take based on John Skeet's answer that doesn't return the tags:
void Main()
{
XmlString("Brackets & stuff <> and \"quotes\"").Dump();
}
public string XmlString(string text)
{
return new XElement("t", text).LastNode.ToString();
}
This returns just the value passed in, in XML encoded format:
Brackets & stuff <> and "quotes"
WARNING: Necromancing
Still Darin Dimitrov's answer + System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape(string s) isn't complete.
In XML 1.1, the simplest and safest way is to just encode EVERYTHING.
Like for \t.
It isn't supported at all in XML 1.0.
For XML 1.0, one possible workaround is to base-64 encode the text containing the character(s).
//string EncodedXml = SpecialXmlEscape("привет мир");
//Console.WriteLine(EncodedXml);
//string DecodedXml = XmlUnescape(EncodedXml);
//Console.WriteLine(DecodedXml);
public static string SpecialXmlEscape(string input)
{
//string content = System.Xml.XmlConvert.EncodeName("\t");
//string content = System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape("\t");
//string strDelimiter = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode("\t"); // XmlEscape("\t"); //XmlDecode(" ");
//strDelimiter = XmlUnescape(";");
//Console.WriteLine(strDelimiter);
//Console.WriteLine(string.Format("&#{0};", (int)';'));
//Console.WriteLine(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.HeaderName);
//Console.WriteLine(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.HeaderName);
string strXmlText = "";
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(input))
return input;
System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; ++i)
{
sb.AppendFormat("&#{0};", (int)input[i]);
}
strXmlText = sb.ToString();
sb.Clear();
sb = null;
return strXmlText;
} // End Function SpecialXmlEscape
XML 1.0:
public static string Base64Encode(string plainText)
{
var plainTextBytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plainText);
return System.Convert.ToBase64String(plainTextBytes);
}
public static string Base64Decode(string base64EncodedData)
{
var base64EncodedBytes = System.Convert.FromBase64String(base64EncodedData);
return System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(base64EncodedBytes);
}
Following functions will do the work. Didn't test against XmlDocument, but I guess this is much faster.
public static string XmlEncode(string value)
{
System.Xml.XmlWriterSettings settings = new System.Xml.XmlWriterSettings
{
ConformanceLevel = System.Xml.ConformanceLevel.Fragment
};
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
using (var writer = System.Xml.XmlWriter.Create(builder, settings))
{
writer.WriteString(value);
}
return builder.ToString();
}
public static string XmlDecode(string xmlEncodedValue)
{
System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings settings = new System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings
{
ConformanceLevel = System.Xml.ConformanceLevel.Fragment
};
using (var stringReader = new System.IO.StringReader(xmlEncodedValue))
{
using (var xmlReader = System.Xml.XmlReader.Create(stringReader, settings))
{
xmlReader.Read();
return xmlReader.Value;
}
}
}
Using a third-party library (Newtonsoft.Json) as alternative:
public static string XmlEscape(string unescaped)
{
if (unescaped == null) return null;
return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(unescaped); ;
}
public static string XmlUnescape(string escaped)
{
if (escaped == null) return null;
return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(escaped, typeof(string)).ToString();
}
Examples of escaped string:
a<b ==> "a<b"
<foo></foo> ==> "foo></foo>"
NOTE:
In newer versions, the code written above may not work with escaping, so you need to specify how the strings will be escaped:
public static string XmlEscape(string unescaped)
{
if (unescaped == null) return null;
return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(unescaped, new JsonSerializerSettings()
{
StringEscapeHandling = StringEscapeHandling.EscapeHtml
});
}
Examples of escaped string:
a<b ==> "a\u003cb"
<foo></foo> ==> "\u003cfoo\u003e\u003c/foo\u003e"
SecurityElementEscape does this job for you
Use this method to replace invalid characters in a string before using the string in a SecurityElement. If invalid characters are used in a SecurityElement without being escaped, an ArgumentException is thrown.
The following table shows the invalid XML characters and their escaped equivalents.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.security.securityelement.escape?view=net-5.0