How to read/write text and avoid special character signs (<, , >, etc)

I am currently parsing some C# scripts that are stored in a database, extracting the body of some methods in the code, and then writing an XML file that shows the id, the body of the extracted methods, etc.

The problem I have write now is that when I write the code in the XML I have to write it as a literal string, so I thought I'd need to add " at the beginning and end:

new XElement("MethodName", @"""" + Extractor.GetMethodBody(rule.RuleScript, "MethodName") + @"""")

This works, but 开发者_Python百科I have a problem, things that are written in the DB as

for (int n = 1; n < 10; n++)

are written into the XML file (or printed to console) as:

for (int n = 1; n < 10; n++)

How can I get it to print the actual character and not its code? The code in the database is written with the actual charaters, not the "safe" < like one.

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Inside xml (as a text value) it is correct for < to be encoded as <. The internal representation of xml doesn't affect the value, so let it get encoded. You can get around this by forcing a CDATA section, but in all honesty - it isn't worth it. But here is an example using CDATA:

string noEncoding = new XElement("foo", new XCData("a < b")).ToString();

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Why do you think that you have to write it as a literal string? That is not so. Besides, you are not writing it as a literal string at all, it's still a dynamic string value only that you have added quotation marks around it.

A literal string is a string that is written litteraly in the code, like "Hello world". If you get the string in any other way, it's not a literal string.

The quotation marks that you have added to the string simply adds quotation marks to the value, they don't do anything else to the string. You can add the string with the quotation marks just fine:

new XElement("MethodName", Extractor.GetMethodBody(rule.RuleScript, "MethodName"))

Now, the characters that are encoded when they are put in the XML, is because they need to be encoded. You can't put a < character inside a value without encoding it.

If you show the XML, you will see the encoded values, and that is just a sign that it works as it should. When you read the XML, the encoded characters will be decoded, and you end up with the original string.

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I don't know what software he's going to use to read the XML, but any that I know of will throw an error on parsing any XML that does not escape < and > chars which aren't used as tag starts and ends. It's just part of the XML specification; these chars are reserved as part of the structure.

If I were you, then, I'd part ways with the System.XML utilities and write this file yourself. Any decent XML tool is going to encode those chars for you, so you should probably not use them. Go with a StreamWriter and create the output the way you are being told to. That way you can control the XML output yourself, even if it means breaking the XML specification.

using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("c:\\xmlText.xml", false, Encoding.UTF8))
{
 sw.WriteLine("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>");
 sw.WriteLine("<Class>");

 sw.Write("\t<Method Name=\"MethodName\">");
 sw.Write(@"""" + Extractor.GetMethodBody(rule.RuleScript, "MethodName") + @"""");
 sw.WriteLine("</Method>");

 // ... and so on and so forth

 sw.WriteLine("</Class>");
}