How to decode string to XML string in C#

Question

I have a string (from a CDATA element) that contains description of XML. I need to decode this string into a new string that displays the characters correctly using C#

Existing String:

&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?&gt;&lt;myreport xmlns="http://test.com/rules/client"&gt;&lt;admin&gt;&lt;ordernumber&gt;123&lt;/ordernumber&gt;&lt;state&gt;NY&lt;/state&gt;&lt;/report&gt;&lt;/myreport&gt;

String Wanted:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<myreport xmlns="http://test.com/rules/client">
<admin><ordernumber>123</ordernumber><state>NY</state></report></myreport>

@Jeff Mercado: was using linqpad to write an answer when i saw the string is invalid and HtmlDecode won't work as it accepts string. was merley pointing out that our OP needs to escape " too. — codeandcloud
– codeandcloud, Commented Jul 20, 2011 at 5:19

Kirill Polishchuk · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-27 23:11:28Z

52

HttpUtility.HtmlDecode from System.Web
WebUtility.HtmlDecode from System.Net

edited Jun 27, 2019 at 23:11

answered Jul 20, 2011 at 5:00

Kirill Polishchuk

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Comments

Wojciech · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-28 16:06:44Z

47

You can use System.Net.WebUtility.HtmlDecode instead of HttpUtility.HtmlDecode

Useful if you don't want System.Web reference and prefer System.Net instead.

edited Oct 28, 2014 at 16:06

Wojciech

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answered Jun 16, 2014 at 12:19

matabares

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2 Comments

Mal Ross Over a year ago

Thanks! This is really handy, as I want to target the .NET 4.0 Client Profile, but referencing System.Web would require me to target the full .NET 4.0 profile.

Devolus Jul 1 at 18:06

Much better answer IMO.

Wernight · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-09 09:23:42Z

6

As Kirill and msarchet said, you can use HttpUtility.HtmlDecode from System.Web. It escapes pretty much anything correctly.

If you don't want to reference System.Web you might use some trick which supports all XML escaping but not HTML-specific escaping like é:

public static string XmlDecode(string value) {
    var xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
    xmlDoc.LoadXml("<root>" + value + "</root>");
    return xmlDoc.InnerText;
}

You could also use a RegEx or simple string.Replace but it would only support basic XML escaping. Things like А or é are examples that would be harder to support.

edited Aug 9, 2012 at 9:23

answered Aug 9, 2012 at 9:18

Wernight

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2 Comments

cederlof Over a year ago

I wouldn't parse XML/HTML with RegEx: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/…

cederlof Over a year ago

(I liked the XmlDocument-method though) +1

Jon Grant · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-12 14:28:29Z

1

HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(xmlString) will solve this issue

edited Nov 12, 2018 at 14:28

Jon Grant

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answered Apr 5, 2017 at 6:12

Sharthak Ghosh

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Comments

Andrei S · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-24 08:10:15Z

0

You can use HTML.Raw. That way the markup is not encoded.

answered Feb 24, 2015 at 8:10

Andrei S

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1 Comment

winhowes Over a year ago

Can you provide some sample code to better explain your answer?

Ghasem · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-25 03:16:36Z

-1

You just need to replace the scaped characters with their originals.

string stringWanted= existingString.Replace("&lt;", "<")
                                                   .Replace("&amp;", "&")
                                                   .Replace("&gt;", ">")
                                                   .Replace("&quot;", "\"")
                                                   .Replace("&apos;", "'");

answered May 25, 2015 at 3:16

Ghasem

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1 Comment

Tom W Over a year ago

Well that is very strange. I've just produced an example that I was expecting to demonstrate the problem, and it works precisely as desired. What makes it strange is that I know this exact situation is responsible for an XML parsing error in a codebase I maintain that I fixed yesterday. At least, I think it's exactly the same. I'll cancel the downvote and remove my original comment until I get a chance to check.

Noah Stahl · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-19 00:58:33Z

-2

You might also consider the static parse method from XDocument. I'm not sure how it compares to others mentioned here, but it seems to parse these strings well.

Once you get the resulting XDocument, you could turn around with ToString to get the string back:

string parsedString = XDocument.Parse("<My XML />").ToString();

answered Feb 19, 2015 at 0:58

Noah Stahl

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