Question

XML Special Characters

Asked by: priyananth

I'm having an issue with special characters being replaced by some different characters in the xml document.
For example  is "®" comes out as "®".


   XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
        document.Load("C:\test.xml");
        document.Save("C:\test2.xml");

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
I checked the encoding. both has same encoding text. But when I save test2.xml, it has some characters in root
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

How to handle this...

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Asked On
2009-11-03 at 15:11:47ID24869285
Tags

asp.net

,

c#

,

vb.net

Topics

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

,

Programming for ASP.NET

,

Microsoft Visual C#.Net

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: mas_oz2003Posted on 2009-11-03 at 18:20:52ID: 25735855

Can you post your file?
I tried to check that the original file does not come from a different encoding.
If you open the original file in notepad, can you see the character changes?

 

by: priyananthPosted on 2009-11-03 at 19:05:35ID: 25736060

Hi mas_oz2003.. attached the xml.

second xml text has rendered register mark. but i dont need that since it just saves the file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<document xmlns="urn:hl7-org:v3">
 <title> mytitle &#xae; 12 HOUR </title>
</document> 
Produces : 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<document xmlns="urn:hl7-org:v3">
  <title> mytitle ® 12 HOUR </title>
</document>
                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: mas_oz2003Posted on 2009-11-03 at 19:14:27ID: 25736089

Ok. this is the issue: &# is a special construct in xml files:
U+00AE ® c2 ae REGISTERED SIGN

This is the reason that when you saved, the string(&#xae) is being translated to its equivalent unicode value.

Check:
http://www.opentag.com/xfaq_charrep.htm#char_ncrvalue

 

by: priyananthPosted on 2009-11-03 at 20:48:32ID: 25736475

hi mas0z2003,

This is not the only xml i need to do. there can be many xmls. is there any other way to do this.
The second xml produces  "®" . its not pasted in the code block.

 

by: mas_oz2003Posted on 2009-11-03 at 22:23:41ID: 25736888

how to handle it
Include your special characters(eg. &#xae) in CDATA section. see:
http://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_cdata.asp
so that all special characters will be ignored by the parser.

or open the file as text and manipulate its contents as text. (Not pretty but it seems to be the only way to do it)

By the way what version of .net are you using?

 

by: NNirmalanPosted on 2009-11-04 at 08:42:32ID: 25741175

Looks like the issue in your comparison tool. for eg if you use the Araxis Merge 2001 you can observe that 
characters, also when you check with latest version of the merge tool it wont show that.

Hope this helps.

 

by: mas_oz2003Posted on 2009-11-04 at 13:58:17ID: 25744429

something that you can try is to use xsl transforms when merging your xmls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164169.aspx
(See the end of first question.)

if it does not work my previous post still holds

 

by: priyananthPosted on 2009-11-08 at 18:28:55ID: 31649714

Thanks for the support

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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