CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xml
klashagelqvist
klashagelqvist

Reputation: 1261

Illegal characters in XML

I have a .NET application written in C# that saves information in XML format. The application serializes the application data into xml. The application contains a textbox where the user is free to enter any text. I have cases where users have managed to enter characters, mostly when they copy and paste text from other applications into the textbox, where the xml document becomes corrupted. Is there a general approach to manage illegal characters in xml documents without having to filter them out in every textbox on entry.

Sample from document thats corrupted

<Propery>
  <Name>&#x8;Alimentação Controlador</Name>
  <Value>24</Value>
  <Unit>Vca</Unit>
</Propery>

Document is serialized with ASCIIEncoding.UTF8

Upvotes: 3

Views: 8748

Answers (4)

Koen Goovaerts
Koen Goovaerts

Reputation: 161

You should replace following illegal characters with:

&lt; (<)

&amp; (&)

&gt; (>)

&quot; (")

&apos; (')

Upvotes: 1

Hardik
Hardik

Reputation: 1764

You should use best practices as suggested by JTMon.

I also ran into same situation when exporting to XML. I dont know whether it would work for you or not but try using stringbuilder instead string to generate xml.

You can try this too

i.SubItems[0].Text.Trim('\0')

Hope it would help.

Upvotes: -1

dllhell
dllhell

Reputation: 2014

You may use even this "incriminated" characters if you wish using CDATA

look here

Upvotes: 0

JTMon
JTMon

Reputation: 3199

I think your best bet is to "SafeEncode" the string entered by the user. this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.securityelement.escape(VS.80).aspx shows you how to do it easily with one call to the SecurityElement.Escape(string s) method.

Upvotes: 3

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