Displaying Special Characters

That might depend on how you are getting these values from the database to your Web page's display.

I am outputting them like this inside a DataList ItemTemplate:

<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"subCatName")%>

I don't know how else to do it.

I'm presuming that the DataList is being bound to some data source object, and that that data source object is being populated from the database somehow....

Yes it is nested inside another DataList and get's it's source from a DataRelation Table:

<asp:DataList ID="SiteList" RepeatColumns="3" RepeatDirection="Horizontal" runat="server">
    <ItemTemplate>
     <a href="categoriesMain.aspx?catID=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryID")%>"<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName")%></a>

         <asp:DataList ID="SiteSubCats" datasource='<%#((DataRowView)Container.DataItem).Row.GetChildRows("CatSub")%>'  runat="server">
      <ItemTemplate>
                  <a href="products.aspx?subCatID=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"[\"subCatID\"]")%>"
      &subCatName=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"[\"subCatName\"]")%>
                 </a>
      </ItemTemplate>
           </asp:DataList>
            
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>

Sorry--there's an extra " in there from bad copying and pasting--please ignore.

Hi have several places in my website that display output from the database using:

<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"subCatName")%> and they do the same thing so my problem doesn't necessary pertain to the code layout above, just simply to the out put via DataBinder.Eval.

If it's in the database as:

"Oranges & Apples", it will output as "Oranges"

Also if it is in the database as: 14" TV it will dislay 14" TV but the css formatting will disappear as thought the " closed the tag before style tag kicked in.

Thanks--just got your last post. Am trying it out now....

Thogek,

It wasn't the url encode at all!  When I went back to look, I noticed in the status bar that "Oranges & Apples" show up fine as &category=Oranges & Apples&catID=14  etc.

By accident I noticed that there was a space after &category=Oranges  & Apples before &catID so I went to my code and changed:

<a href="products.aspx?subCatID=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"[\"subCatID\"]")%>
&subCatName=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"[\"subCatName\"]")%>

to put it all on one line--the problem was fixed!  The problem was that I split the querystring into several lines to make it easier for viewing on the code page--I guess I should keep it all on one line.

Looking at the "other" places on my website where I am outputing "Oranges & Apples" as only "Oranges"--they are not url links.  I retreive the values from a querystring so:

string SubCatName=Request.QueryString["subCatName"].ToString();

To output by: <%=SubCatName%> will only give me "Oranges".

How to fix this?

In the case of
    string SubCatName=Request.QueryString["subCatName"].ToString();
how is the subCatName populated into the QueryString in the first place?  (I suspect this is still a case where a preceeding link should have used Server.UrlEncode, as discussed above.)

You are probably right--I see % in the address bar...am changing now...

I got this error:

Compiler Error Message: CS1502: The best overloaded method match for 'System.Web.HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode(string)' has some invalid arguments

for this:

<a href="categoriesMain.aspx?catID=<%#HttpContext.Current.Server.UrlEncode(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryID"))%>&category=<%#HttpContext.Current.Server.UrlEncode(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName"))%>"><%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName"))%></a>

Is there some way to convert it on the page that receives the querystring?

Can we replace %20 with ""? it's the spaces that are giving me problems--doesn't look like the & is.

ANSWER:

You need to do Convert.ToString();

So:

<a href="categoriesMain.aspx?catID=<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryID")%>&category=<%#Server.UrlEncode(Convert.ToString(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName")))%>">

Point awarded anyways for letting me know about Server.Encode.