“<” in a text box in ASP.NET --> how to allow it?

Question

I have a textfield which displays a string which contains < and >. The code throws an error because of that. How can I allow the usage of those chars in my textfield?

Answer 1

your problem is,you cannot use html tags in .net controls. so set the ValidateRequest="false" in your aspx page and encode the text before you saving the text.

    //encode
    private string Encode(string text)
    {
        byte[] encodedText = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(text);
        return System.Convert.ToBase64String(encodedText);
    }

when you retrieving your text make sure to decode the encoded text.

    // Decode:
    private string Decode(string encodedText)
    {
        byte[] decodedText = System.Convert.FromBase64String(encodedText);
        return System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decodedText );
    }