Develop Reference

Character ä is represented in different Char Codes in the same string

I have a on web uploaded File Name "Schränke Wintsch.pdf".
The file Name is saved in a XML file like so:
<File>Schra?nke Wintsch.pdf</File>
If I debug this in c# and maunally add an ä, then it is saved correctly.
<File>Schra?nke Wintsch-ä.pdf</File>
OK I know it is an Encoding Problem.
But why is the same ä character represented with different char codes(example on Img 2)?

XML defines the encoding used within the document using the header. It will look something like this.. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-9" ?>.
If you append the string make sure to use the same encoding to avoid a mismatch.
Test appending the char bytes and see if that helps.
var en = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-9");
en.GetString(Encoding.GetBytes("ä"));

The original XML that you have is using the Unicode 'COMBINING DIAERESIS' code (int value 776) to use two characters to representä.
(Note how the combining character has been displayed as ? in the <File>Schra?nke Wintsch.pdf</File> image in your post.)
The 776 code says to put the double-dots above the previous character (an a).
However, where you typed in the ä it has been stored as the unicode character with code 228.
The question you need to answer is: Why is the original source XML using the "Combining Diaeresis" character rather than the more usual ä? (Without knowing the origin of the XML file, we cannot answer that question.)
Incidentally, you can "normalise" those sorts of characters by using string.Normalize(), as demonstrated by the following program:
using System;
namespace Demo
{
static class Program
{
static void Main()
{
char[] a = {(char)97, (char)776};
string s = new string(a);
Console.WriteLine(s + " -> " + s.Length); // Prints a¨ -> 2
var t = s.Normalize();
Console.WriteLine(t + " -> " + t.Length); // Prints ä -> 1
}
}
}
Note how the length of s is 2, but the length of t is only 1 (and it contains the single character ä).
So you might be able to improve things by using string.Normalize() to normalise these unexpected characters.

string.Normalize() ist the working solution for the string "Schränke Wintsch-ä.pdf". So it ist correctly saved as Schränke Wintsch-ä.pdf

XML Deserialization with special characters in C# XMlSerializer

I have an xml sheet which contains some special character "& is the special character causing issues" and i use below code to deserialize XML
XMLDATAMODEL imported_data;
// Create an instance of the XmlSerializer specifying type and namespace.
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(XMLDATAMODEL));
// A FileStream is needed to read the XML document.
FileStream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open);
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(fs);
// Use the Deserialize method to restore the object's state.
imported_data = (XMLDATAMODEL)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
fs.Close();
and structre of my XML MOdel is like this
[XmlRoot(ElementName = "XMLDATAMODEL")]
public class XMLDATAMODEL
{
[XmlElement(ElementName = "EventName")]
public string EventName { get; set; }
[XmlElement(ElementName = "Location")]
public string Location { get; set; }
}
I tried this code as well with Encoding mentioned but no success
// Declare an object variable of the type to be deserialized.
StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(path, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, true);
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(XMLDATAMODEL));
imported_data = (XMLDATAMODEL)serializer.Deserialize(streamReader);
streamReader.Close();
Both approaches failed and if i put special character inside Cdata it looks working.
How can i make it work for xml data without CData as well?
Here is my XML file content
http://pastebin.com/Cy7icrgS
And error i am getting is There is an error in XML document (2, 17).

The best answer I could get after looking around is, unless you serialize the data yourself, it will be pretty trouble some to deserialize XML will special characters.
For your case, since the special character is & before you can deserialize it, you should convert it to & Unless the character & is converted to & we cannot really deserialize it with XmlSerializer. Yes, we still can read it by using
XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
settings.CheckCharacters = false; //not to check false character, this setting can be set.
FileStream fs = new FileStream(xmlfolder + "\\xmltest.xml", FileMode.Open);
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(fs, settings);
But we cannot deserialize it.
As how to convert & to &, there are various ways with plus and minus. But the bottom line in all conversion is, do not use stream directly. Just take the data from the file and convert it to string by using, for example, File.ReadAllText and start doing the string processing. After that, convert it to MemoryStream and start the deserialization;
And now for the string processing before deserialization, there are couple of ways to do it.
The easiest, and most of the time could be the most unsafe, would be by using string.Replace("&", "&").
The other way, harder but safer, is by using Regex. Since your case is something inside CData, this could be a good way too.
Another way harder yet safer, by creating your parsing for line by line.
I have yet to find what is the common, safe, way for this conversion.
But as for your example, the string.Replace would work. Also, you could potentially exploit the pattern (something inside CData) to use Regex. This could be a good way too.
Edit:
As for what are considered as special characters in XML and how to process them before hand, according to this, non-Roman characters are included.
Apart from the non-Roman characters, in here, there are 5 special characters listed:
< -> <
> -> >
" -> "
' -> &apos;
& -> &
And from here, we get one more:
% -> %
Hope they can help you!

Importing Data from a csv file

I have a csv file.
When I try to read that file using filestream readtoend(), I get inverted commas and \r at many places that breaks my number of rows in each column.
Is there a way to remove inverted commas and \r.
I tried to replace
FileStream obj = new FileStream();
string a = obj.ReadToEnd();
a.Replace("\"","");
a.Replace("\r\"","");
When I visualize a all \r and inverted commas are removed.
But when I read the file again from beginning using ReadLine() they appear again?

First of all, a String is immutable. You might think this is not important for your question, but actualy it's important whenever you are developing.
If I look at your code snippet, I'm pretty sure you have no knowledge of immutable objects so I advice you to make sure you fully understand the concept.
More information regarding immutable objects can be found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutable_object
Basicly, it means one can never modify a string object. Strings will always point to a new object whenever we change the value.
That's why the Replace method returns a value, which's documentation can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.string.replace%28v=vs.110%29.aspx and states clearly that it Returns a new string in which all occurrences of a specified string in the current instance are replaced with another specified string.
In your example, you aren't using the return value of the Replace function.
Could you show us that the string values are actuably being replaced from your a variable? Because I do not believe this is going to be the case. When you visualize a string, carriage returns (\r) are not visual and replaced by an actual carriage return. If you debug and take alook at the actual string value, you should still see the \n.
Take the following code snippet:
var someString = "Hello / world";
someString.Replace("/", "");
Console.Log(someString);
You might think that the console will show "Hello world". However, on this fiddle you can see that it still logs "Hello / World": https://dotnetfiddle.net/cp59i3
What you have to do to correctly use String.Replace can be seen in this fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/XCGtOu
Basicly, you want to log the return value of the Replace function:
var a = "Some / Value";
var b = a.Replace("/", "");
Console.WriteLine(b);
Also, as mentioned by others in the comment section at ur post, you are not replacing the contents of the file, but the string variable in your memory.
If you want to save the new string, make sure to use the Write method of the FileStream (or any other way to write to a file), an explanation can be found here: How to Find And Replace Text In A File With C#
Apart from all what I have been saying throughout this answer, you should not replace both inverted comma's and carriage returns in a file in most cases, they are there for a reason. Unless you do have a specific reason.

At last I succeeded. Thanks to everybody. Here is the code I did.
FileStream obj = new FileStream();
using(StreamReader csvr = new StreamReader(obj))
{
string a = obj.ReadToEnd();
a = a.Replace("\"","");
a = a.Replace("\r\"","");
obj.Dispose();
}
using(StreamWriter Wr = new StreamWriter(TempPath))
{
Wr.Write(a);
}
using(StreamReader Sr = new StreamReader(Tempath))
{
Sr.ReadLine();
}
I Created a temp path on the system. After this things were easy to enter into database.

Try something like this
StreamReader sReader = new StreamReader("filename");
string a = sReader.ReadToEnd();
a.Replace("\"", "");
a.Replace("\r\"", "");
StringReader reader = new StringReader(a);
string inputLine = "";
while ((inputLine = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
}

issue with XML encoding

I tried to phrase this as a generic question but realized I don't know enough, so here is the problem I'm having.
Here is a snippet from a console application:
public void Run()
{
Run(Console.Out);
}
public void Run(TextWriter writer)
{
DataTable customers = _quickBooksAdapter.GetTableData("Customer");
customers.WriteXml(writer);
}
Then I run it from the console and use ">" to put it in a file.
c:\> QuickBooksETL extract US > qb_us.xml
If i try to load the result as I would normally:
var x = XDocument.Load("qb_us.xml");
I get the error:
Invalid character in the given encoding. Line 8, position 26.
So I tried to determine what .NET "thinks" it is using:
string path = #"\\ad1\accounting$\Xml\qb_us.xml";
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path);
sr.CurrentEncoding.Dump();
Result:
System.Text.UTF8Encoding
BodyName utf-8
EncodingName Unicode (UTF-8)
HeaderName utf-8
WebName utf-8
WindowsCodePage 1200
IsBrowserDisplay True
IsBrowserSave True
IsMailNewsDisplay True
IsMailNewsSave True
IsSingleByte False
EncoderFallback 5EncoderReplacementFallback
System.Text.EncoderReplacementFallback
DefaultString �
MaxCharCount 1
DecoderFallback 5DecoderReplacementFallback
System.Text.DecoderReplacementFallback
DefaultString �
MaxCharCount 1
IsReadOnly True
CodePage 65001
Finally, I find by guessing that it works if I just explicitly say it's ASCII:
string path = #"\\ad1\accounting$\Xml\qb_us.xml";
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path, Encoding.ASCII);
var x = XDocument.Load(sr);
Any thoughts on where am I going wrong would be greatly appreciated. I admit I have never taken the "deep dive" on character encodings, but I'm willing to put in the effort to get this right.

The simple answer is not to get the console involved. Write directly to the file from your code:
public void Run(string filename)
{
DataTable customers = _quickBooksAdapter.GetTableData("Customer");
customers.WriteXml(filename);
}
or create the TextWriter or Stream yourself and pass that in, e.g.
public void Run(Stream output)
{
DataTable customers = _quickBooksAdapter.GetTableData("Customer");
customers.WriteXml(output);
}
Note that by reading it as ASCII, you'll basically be getting question marks for any non-ASCII character in the original data. IIRC, that's the default behaviour of an encoding when it encounters binary data it can't handle.
Using a Stream it should default to writing out in UTF-8, and the XML declaration and the data within the file should match.

In my experience, if your data includes illegal characters (for example, character 12), the XML doesn't round trip unless you read the XML with an XmlTextReader with Normalization = false. I've been using XmlSerializer.Deserialize(), not XDocument.Load(). Still, you might try calling the Load(XmlReader) overload by passing in an XmlTextReader with Normalization = false.
I would add my voice to Jon's in suggesting that you write to your own stream, not Console.Out.

Using StringWriter for XML Serialization

I'm currently searching for an easy way to serialize objects (in C# 3).
I googled some examples and came up with something like:
MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream ( );
XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer ( typeof ( MyObject) );
XmlTextWriter xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter ( memoryStream, Encoding.UTF8 );
xs.Serialize ( xmlTextWriter, myObject);
string result = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream .ToArray());
After reading this question I asked myself, why not using StringWriter? It seems much easier.
XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyObject));
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
ser.Serialize(writer, myObject);
serializedValue = writer.ToString();
Another Problem was, that the first example generated XML I could not just write into an XML column of SQL Server 2005 DB.
The first question is: Is there a reason why I shouldn't use StringWriter to serialize an Object when I need it as a string afterwards? I never found a result using StringWriter when googling.
The second is, of course: If you should not do it with StringWriter (for whatever reasons), which would be a good and correct way?
Addition:
As it was already mentioned by both answers, I'll further go into the XML to DB problem.
When writing to the Database I got the following exception:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException:
XML parsing: line 1, character 38,
unable to switch the encoding
For string
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><test/>
I took the string created from the XmlTextWriter and just put as xml there. This one did not work (neither with manual insertion into the DB).
Afterwards I tried manual insertion (just writing INSERT INTO ... ) with encoding="utf-16" which also failed.
Removing the encoding totally worked then. After that result I switched back to the StringWriter code and voila - it worked.
Problem: I don't really understand why.
at Christian Hayter: With those tests I'm not sure that I have to use utf-16 to write to the DB. Wouldn't setting the encoding to UTF-16 (in the xml tag) work then?

One problem with StringWriter is that by default it doesn't let you set the encoding which it advertises - so you can end up with an XML document advertising its encoding as UTF-16, which means you need to encode it as UTF-16 if you write it to a file. I have a small class to help with that though:
public sealed class StringWriterWithEncoding : StringWriter
{
public override Encoding Encoding { get; }
public StringWriterWithEncoding (Encoding encoding)
{
Encoding = encoding;
}
}
Or if you only need UTF-8 (which is all I often need):
public sealed class Utf8StringWriter : StringWriter
{
public override Encoding Encoding => Encoding.UTF8;
}
As for why you couldn't save your XML to the database - you'll have to give us more details about what happened when you tried, if you want us to be able to diagnose/fix it.

When serialising an XML document to a .NET string, the encoding must be set to UTF-16. Strings are stored as UTF-16 internally, so this is the only encoding that makes sense. If you want to store data in a different encoding, you use a byte array instead.
SQL Server works on a similar principle; any string passed into an xml column must be encoded as UTF-16. SQL Server will reject any string where the XML declaration does not specify UTF-16. If the XML declaration is not present, then the XML standard requires that it default to UTF-8, so SQL Server will reject that as well.
Bearing this in mind, here are some utility methods for doing the conversion.
public static string Serialize<T>(T value) {
if(value == null) {
return null;
}
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings()
{
Encoding = new UnicodeEncoding(false, false), // no BOM in a .NET string
Indent = false,
OmitXmlDeclaration = false
};
using(StringWriter textWriter = new StringWriter()) {
using(XmlWriter xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(textWriter, settings)) {
serializer.Serialize(xmlWriter, value);
}
return textWriter.ToString();
}
}
public static T Deserialize<T>(string xml) {
if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) {
return default(T);
}
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
// No settings need modifying here
using(StringReader textReader = new StringReader(xml)) {
using(XmlReader xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(textReader, settings)) {
return (T) serializer.Deserialize(xmlReader);
}
}
}

First of all, beware of finding old examples. You've found one that uses XmlTextWriter, which is deprecated as of .NET 2.0. XmlWriter.Create should be used instead.
Here's an example of serializing an object into an XML column:
public void SerializeToXmlColumn(object obj)
{
using (var outputStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(outputStream))
{
var serializer = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType());
serializer.Serialize(writer, obj);
}
outputStream.Position = 0;
using (var conn = new SqlConnection(Settings.Default.ConnectionString))
{
conn.Open();
const string INSERT_COMMAND = #"INSERT INTO XmlStore (Data) VALUES (#Data)";
using (var cmd = new SqlCommand(INSERT_COMMAND, conn))
{
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(outputStream))
{
var xml = new SqlXml(reader);
cmd.Parameters.Clear();
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#Data", xml);
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
}
}
}
}

<TL;DR> The problem is rather simple, actually: you are not matching the declared encoding (in the XML declaration) with the datatype of the input parameter. If you manually added <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><test/> to the string, then declaring the SqlParameter to be of type SqlDbType.Xml or SqlDbType.NVarChar would give you the "unable to switch the encoding" error. Then, when inserting manually via T-SQL, since you switched the declared encoding to be utf-16, you were clearly inserting a VARCHAR string (not prefixed with an upper-case "N", hence an 8-bit encoding, such as UTF-8) and not an NVARCHAR string (prefixed with an upper-case "N", hence the 16-bit UTF-16 LE encoding).
The fix should have been as simple as:
In the first case, when adding the declaration stating encoding="utf-8": simply don't add the XML declaration.
In the second case, when adding the declaration stating encoding="utf-16": either
simply don't add the XML declaration, OR
simply add an "N" to the input parameter type: SqlDbType.NVarChar instead of SqlDbType.VarChar :-) (or possibly even switch to using SqlDbType.Xml)
(Detailed response is below)
All of the answers here are over-complicated and unnecessary (regardless of the 121 and 184 up-votes for Christian's and Jon's answers, respectively). They might provide working code, but none of them actually answer the question. The issue is that nobody truly understood the question, which ultimately is about how the XML datatype in SQL Server works. Nothing against those two clearly intelligent people, but this question has little to nothing to do with serializing to XML. Saving XML data into SQL Server is much easier than what is being implied here.
It doesn't really matter how the XML is produced as long as you follow the rules of how to create XML data in SQL Server. I have a more thorough explanation (including working example code to illustrate the points outlined below) in an answer on this question: How to solve “unable to switch the encoding” error when inserting XML into SQL Server, but the basics are:
The XML declaration is optional
The XML datatype stores strings always as UCS-2 / UTF-16 LE
If your XML is UCS-2 / UTF-16 LE, then you:
pass in the data as either NVARCHAR(MAX) or XML / SqlDbType.NVarChar (maxsize = -1) or SqlDbType.Xml, or if using a string literal then it must be prefixed with an upper-case "N".
if specifying the XML declaration, it must be either "UCS-2" or "UTF-16" (no real difference here)
If your XML is 8-bit encoded (e.g. "UTF-8" / "iso-8859-1" / "Windows-1252"), then you:
need to specify the XML declaration IF the encoding is different than the code page specified by the default Collation of the database
you must pass in the data as VARCHAR(MAX) / SqlDbType.VarChar (maxsize = -1), or if using a string literal then it must not be prefixed with an upper-case "N".
Whatever 8-bit encoding is used, the "encoding" noted in the XML declaration must match the actual encoding of the bytes.
The 8-bit encoding will be converted into UTF-16 LE by the XML datatype
With the points outlined above in mind, and given that strings in .NET are always UTF-16 LE / UCS-2 LE (there is no difference between those in terms of encoding), we can answer your questions:
Is there a reason why I shouldn't use StringWriter to serialize an Object when I need it as a string afterwards?
No, your StringWriter code appears to be just fine (at least I see no issues in my limited testing using the 2nd code block from the question).
Wouldn't setting the encoding to UTF-16 (in the xml tag) work then?
It isn't necessary to provide the XML declaration. When it is missing, the encoding is assumed to be UTF-16 LE if you pass the string into SQL Server as NVARCHAR (i.e. SqlDbType.NVarChar) or XML (i.e. SqlDbType.Xml). The encoding is assumed to be the default 8-bit Code Page if passing in as VARCHAR (i.e. SqlDbType.VarChar). If you have any non-standard-ASCII characters (i.e. values 128 and above) and are passing in as VARCHAR, then you will likely see "?" for BMP characters and "??" for Supplementary Characters as SQL Server will convert the UTF-16 string from .NET into an 8-bit string of the current Database's Code Page before converting it back into UTF-16 / UCS-2. But you shouldn't get any errors.
On the other hand, if you do specify the XML declaration, then you must pass into SQL Server using the matching 8-bit or 16-bit datatype. So if you have a declaration stating that the encoding is either UCS-2 or UTF-16, then you must pass in as SqlDbType.NVarChar or SqlDbType.Xml. Or, if you have a declaration stating that the encoding is one of the 8-bit options (i.e. UTF-8, Windows-1252, iso-8859-1, etc), then you must pass in as SqlDbType.VarChar. Failure to match the declared encoding with the proper 8 or 16 -bit SQL Server datatype will result in the "unable to switch the encoding" error that you were getting.
For example, using your StringWriter-based serialization code, I simply printed the resulting string of the XML and used it in SSMS. As you can see below, the XML declaration is included (because StringWriter does not have an option to OmitXmlDeclaration like XmlWriter does), which poses no problem so long as you pass the string in as the correct SQL Server datatype:
-- Upper-case "N" prefix == NVARCHAR, hence no error:
DECLARE #Xml XML = N'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<string>Test ሴ😸</string>';
SELECT #Xml;
-- <string>Test ሴ😸</string>
As you can see, it even handles characters beyond standard ASCII, given that ሴ is BMP Code Point U+1234, and 😸 is Supplementary Character Code Point U+1F638. However, the following:
-- No upper-case "N" prefix on the string literal, hence VARCHAR:
DECLARE #Xml XML = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<string>Test ሴ😸</string>';
results in the following error:
Msg 9402, Level 16, State 1, Line XXXXX
XML parsing: line 1, character 39, unable to switch the encoding
Ergo, all of that explanation aside, the full solution to your original question is:
You were clearly passing the string in as SqlDbType.VarChar. Switch to SqlDbType.NVarChar and it will work without needing to go through the extra step of removing the XML declaration. This is preferred over keeping SqlDbType.VarChar and removing the XML declaration because this solution will prevent data loss when the XML includes non-standard-ASCII characters. For example:
-- No upper-case "N" prefix on the string literal == VARCHAR, and no XML declaration:
DECLARE #Xml2 XML = '<string>Test ሴ😸</string>';
SELECT #Xml2;
-- <string>Test ???</string>
As you can see, there is no error this time, but now there is data-loss 🙀.

public static T DeserializeFromXml<T>(string xml)
{
T result;
XmlSerializerFactory serializerFactory = new XmlSerializerFactory();
XmlSerializer serializer =serializerFactory.CreateSerializer(typeof(T));
using (StringReader sr3 = new StringReader(xml))
{
XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings()
{
CheckCharacters = false // default value is true;
};
using (XmlReader xr3 = XmlTextReader.Create(sr3, settings))
{
result = (T)serializer.Deserialize(xr3);
}
}
return result;
}

For anyone in need of an F# version of the approved answer:
type private Utf8StringWriter() =
inherit StringWriter()
override _.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8

It may have been covered elsewhere but simply changing the encoding line of the XML source to 'utf-16' allows the XML to be inserted into a SQL Server 'xml'data type.
using (DataSetTableAdapters.SQSTableAdapter tbl_SQS = new DataSetTableAdapters.SQSTableAdapter())
{
try
{
bodyXML = #"<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><test></test>";
bodyXMLutf16 = bodyXML.Replace("UTF-8", "UTF-16");
tbl_SQS.Insert(messageID, receiptHandle, md5OfBody, bodyXMLutf16, sourceType);
}
catch (System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
The result is all of the XML text is inserted into the 'xml' data type field but the 'header' line is removed. What you see in the resulting record is just
<test></test>
Using the serialization method described in the "Answered" entry is a way of including the original header in the target field but the result is that the remaining XML text is enclosed in an XML <string></string> tag.
The table adapter in the code is a class automatically built using the Visual Studio 2013 "Add New Data Source: wizard. The five parameters to the Insert method map to fields in a SQL Server table.