CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xml
Viking22
Viking22

Reputation: 561

Ampersand in querystring in xml attribute

I am facing a strange problem when encoding a URL in an HTML Attribute.

I have the following HTML:

<a href=" https://www.google.co.in/#q=Pune&tbm=nws"></a>

This works fine so far.

However this HTML is generated dynamically using XmlTextWriter.

Hence the code generates the following XML

<a href=" https://www.google.co.in/#q=Pune&amp;tbm=nws"></a>

Note the &amp; after Pune When this link is clicked the browser is unable to decode the tbm=nws parameter.

I read several articles which seemed to suggest that the second HTML above is perfectly valid.

Can you guide me on where could this be going wrong?

EDIT: Adding C# code

 XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter (Console.Out);
 writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

 // Write the root element.
 writer.WriteStartElement("Items");

 // Write a string using WriteRaw. Note that the special
 // characters are not escaped.
 writer.WriteStartElement("Item");
 writer.WriteAttributeString("href","https://www.google.co.in/#q=Pune&tbm=nws");
 writer.WriteString("Write unescaped text:  ");
 writer.WriteRaw("this & that");
 writer.WriteEndElement();

 // Write the same string using WriteString. Note that the 
 // special characters are escaped.
 writer.WriteStartElement("Item");
 writer.WriteString("Write the same string using WriteString:  ");
 writer.WriteString("this & that");
 writer.WriteEndElement();

 // Write the close tag for the root element.
 writer.WriteEndElement();

 // Write the XML to file and close the writer.
 writer.Close();

Upvotes: 0

Views: 731

Answers (1)

Kevin Burdett
Kevin Burdett

Reputation: 2982

I think you are attacking the wrong problem here. Ampersands can (and should) be escaped in HREF tags. See this question for more details: Do I encode ampersands in <a href...>?

The Query string should really be prefixed with ?. This can be ambiguous when using client side frameworks that use #, but the rules still apply.

Try formatting your anchor like this:

<a href="https://www.google.co.in/#/?q=Pune&amp;tbm=nws"></a>

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions