parsing XML with ampersand

Question

I have a string which contains XML, I just want to parse it into Xelement, but it has an ampersand. I still have a problem parseing it with HtmlDecode. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If your string is not valid XML, it will not parse. If it contains an ampersand on its own, it's not valid XML. Contrary to HTML, XML is very strict.

Answer 2

This is the simplest and best approach. Works with all characters and allows to parse XML for any web service call i.e. SharePoint ASMX.

public string XmlEscape(string unescaped)
        {
            XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
            var node = doc.CreateElement("root");
            node.InnerText = unescaped;
            return node.InnerXml;
        }

Answer 3

The ampersant makes the XML invalid. This cannot be fixed by a stylesheet so you need to write code with some other tool or code in VB/C#/PHP/Delphi/Lisp/Etc. to remove it or to translate it to &.