Reputation: 7209

Escape double quote character in XML

Is there an escape character for a double quote in xml? I want to write a tag like:

<parameter name="Quote = " ">

but if I put ", then that means string has ended. I need something like this (c++):

printf("Quote = \" ");

Is there a character to write before the double quote to escape it?

Upvotes: 133

Answers (8)

EAM

Reputation: 401

You can try using the a backslash followed by a "u" and then the unicode value for the character, for example the unicode value of the double quote is

" -> U+0022

Therefore if you were setting it as part of text in XML in android it would look something like this,

<TextView
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="match_parent"
     android:text=" \u0022 Showing double quotes \u0022 "/>

This would produce a text in the TextView roughly something like this

" Showing double quotes "

You can find unicode of most symbols and characters here www.unicode-table.com/en

Upvotes: 2

kjhughes

Reputation: 111621

^{New, improved answer to an old, frequently asked question...}

When to escape double quote in XML

Double quote (") may appear without escaping:

In XML textual content:

<NoEscapeNeeded>He said, "Don't quote me."</NoEscapeNeeded>

In XML attributes delimited by single quotes ('):
```
<NoEscapeNeeded name='Pete "Maverick" Mitchell'/>
```
Note: switching to single quotes (') also requires no escaping:
```
<NoEscapeNeeded name="Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell"/>
```

Double quote (") must be escaped:

In XML attributes delimited by double quotes:

<EscapeNeeded name="Pete &quot;Maverick&quot; Mitchell"/>

Bottom line

Double quote (") must be escaped as " in XML only in very limited contexts.

Upvotes: 21

Alex Muriithi

Reputation: 1901

Here are the common characters which need to be escaped in XML, starting with double quotes:

double quotes (") are escaped to "
ampersand (&) is escaped to &
single quotes (') are escaped to '
less than (<) is escaped to <
greater than (>) is escaped to >

Upvotes: 150

Brad Cupit

Reputation: 6580

If you just need to try something out quickly, here's a quick and dirty solution. Use single quotes for the attribute value:

<parameter name='Quote = " '>

Upvotes: 8

Neven

Reputation: 21

In C++ you can use EscapeXML ATL API. This is the correct way of handling special chars ...

Upvotes: 2

Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1500873

Others have answered in terms of how to handle the specific escaping in this case.

A broader answer is not to try to do it yourself. Use an XML API - there are plenty available for just about every modern programming platform in existence.

XML APIs will handle things like this for you automatically, making it a lot harder to go wrong. Unless you're writing an XML API yourself, you should rarely need to worry about the details like this.

Upvotes: 29