Illegal characters in path c# - XmlTextWriter - c#

I am using XmlTextWriter and get an error while loading URL from rest service. The error is "illegal characters in path". I have tried using #"https://www.foo.com/foobar/rest-1/Data/Test?sel=GeneratedFrom&find=TS-01108&findin=Parent.Number"
When I step through with debugger I see the value has quotations, but I suspect it might be either the "?", "=", "&" or "." perhaps.
string URL = "https://www.foo.com/foobar/rest-1/Data/Test?sel=GeneratedFrom&find=TS-01108&findin=Parent.Number";
string XML_FILENAME = URL + ".xml";
WebResponse response = utils.GetRestResponse(URL);
if (response != null)
{
XmlDocument xmldoc = new XmlDocument();
xmldoc.Load(XmlReader.Create(response.GetResponseStream()));
// Illegal characters in path happens here
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(XML_FILENAME, null);

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the first XmlTextWriter initializer parameter. If a string parameter is passed there, that should be a filename not a web resource.

https://www.foo.com/foobar/rest-1/Data/Test?sel=GeneratedFrom&find=TS-01108&findin=Parent.Number
Is not a legal file name, change it to something else. When the xml file is written to the disk it needs a legal name, your name is contains illegal characters. Try to create a text file with that name and windows will complain.

Related

How to get unicode string with WebClient DownloadData?

Sorry for my bad English.
I am trying to get a string data with this code:
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
byte[] buffer = wc.DownloadData("http://......);
string xml = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer);
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(xml);
the string has Unicode data. when I get this with my browser like firefox every things are ok.
But in my code the string is broken and xml file is useless. Some characters changed to their
decimal value and when reading xml file they are only characters that we can read. and others
changed to strange signs.
Do you know how can I do?
Put your data into a stream:
var stream = new MemoryStream(buffer);
And load it with the Load method:
doc.Load(stream);
This will try to detect the correct encoding.
Or maybe WebClient.DownloadString will work as well.

xml.LoadData - Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1

I'm trying to parse some XML inside a WiX installer. The XML would be an object of all my errors returned from a web server. I'm getting the error in the question title with this code:
XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
try
{
xml.LoadXml(myString);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(#"C:\text.txt", myString + "\r\n\r\n" + ex.Message);
throw ex;
}
myString is this (as seen in the output of text.txt)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Errors></Errors>
text.txt comes out looking like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Errors></Errors>
Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.
I need this XML to parse so I can see if I had any errors.
The hidden character is probably BOM.
The explanation to the problem and the solution can be found here, credits to James Schubert, based on an answer by James Brankin found here.
Though the previous answer does remove the hidden character, it also removes the whole first line. The more precise version would be:
string _byteOrderMarkUtf8 = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Encoding.UTF8.GetPreamble());
if (xml.StartsWith(_byteOrderMarkUtf8))
{
xml = xml.Remove(0, _byteOrderMarkUtf8.Length);
}
I encountered this problem when fetching an XSLT file from Azure blob and loading it into an XslCompiledTransform object.
On my machine the file looked just fine, but after uploading it as a blob and fetching it back, the BOM character was added.
Use Load() method instead, it will solve the problem. See more
The issue here was that myString had that header line. Either there was some hidden character at the beginning of the first line or the line itself was causing the error. I sliced off the first line like so:
xml.LoadXml(myString.Substring(myString.IndexOf(Environment.NewLine)));
This solved my problem.
I Think that the problem is about encoding. That's why removing first line(with encoding byte) might solve the problem.
My solution for Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.
in XDocument.Parse(xmlString) was replacing it with XDocument.Load( new MemoryStream( xmlContentInBytes ) );
I've noticed that my xml string looked ok:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
but in different text editor encoding it looked like this:
?<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
At the end i did not need the xml string but xml byte[]. If you need to use the string you should look for "invisible" bytes in your string and play with encodings to adjust the xml content for parsing or loading.
Hope it will help
Save your file with different encoding:
File > Save file as... > Save as UTF-8 without signature.
In VS 2017 you find encoding as a dropdown next to Save button.
Main culprit for this error is logic which determines encoding when converting Stream or byte[] array to .NET string.
Using StreamReader created with 2nd constructor parameter detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks set to true, will determine proper encoding and create string which does not break XmlDocument.LoadXml method.
public string GetXmlString(string url)
{
using var stream = GetResponseStream(url);
using var reader = new StreamReader(stream, true);
return reader.ReadToEnd(); // no exception on `LoadXml`
}
Common mistake would be to just blindly use UTF8 encoding on the stream or byte[]. Code bellow would produce string that looks valid when inspected in Visual Studio debugger, or copy-pasted somewhere, but it will produce the exception when used with Load or LoadXml if file is encoded differently then UTF8 without BOM.
public string GetXmlString(string url)
{
byte[] bytes = GetResponseByteArray(url);
return System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes); // potentially exception on `LoadXml`
}
I've solved this issue by directly editing the byte array.
Collect the UTF8 preamble and remove directly the header.
Afterward you can transform the byte[]to a string with GetString method, see below.
The \r and \t I've removed as well, just as precaution.
XmlDocument configurationXML = new XmlDocument();
List<byte> byteArray = new List<byte>(webRequest.downloadHandler.data);
foreach(byte singleByte in Encoding.UTF8.GetPreamble())
{
byteArray.RemoveAt(byteArray.IndexOf(singleByte));
}
string xml = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(byteArray.ToArray());
xml = xml.Replace("\\r", "");
xml = xml.Replace("\\t", "");
If your xml is in a string use the following to remove any byte order mark:
xml = new Regex("\\<\\?xml.*\\?>").Replace(xml, "");
At first I had problems escaping the "&" character, then diacritics and special letters were shown as question marks and ended up with the issue OP mentioned.
I looked at the answers and I used #Ringo's suggestion to try Load() method as an alternative. That made me realize that I can deal with my response in other ways not just as a string.
using System.IO.Stream instead of string solved all the issues for me.
var response = await this.httpClient.GetAsync(url);
var responseStream = await response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync();
var xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
xmlDocument.Load(responseStream);
The cool thing about Load() is that this method automatically detects the string format of the input XML (for example, UTF-8, ANSI, and so on). See more
I have found out one of the solutions.
For your code this could be as follows -
XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
try
{
// assuming the location of the file is in the current directory
// assuming the file name be loadData.xml
string myString = "./loadData.xml";
xml.Load(myString);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(#"C:\text.txt", myString + "\r\n\r\n" + ex.Message);
throw ex;
}
if we are using XDocument.Parse(#"").
Use # it resolves the issue.
Using an XmlDataDocument object is much better than using an XDocument or XmlDocument object. XmlDataDocument works fine with UTF8 and it doesn't have problems with Byte Order Sequences. You can get the child nodes of each element using ChildNodes property.
Use a custom function such as the following one:
static public void ReadXmlDataDocument2(string xmlFilePath)
{
if (xmlFilePath != null)
{
if (File.Exists(xmlFilePath))
{
System.IO.FileStream fs = default(System.IO.FileStream);
try
{
fs = new System.IO.FileStream(xmlFilePath, System.IO.FileMode.Open, System.IO.FileAccess.Read);
System.Xml.XmlDataDocument k_XDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDataDocument();
k_XDoc.Load(fs);
fs.Close();
fs.Dispose();
fs = null;
XmlNodeList ndsRoot = k_XDoc.ChildNodes;
foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode xLog in ndsRoot)
{
foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode xLog2 in xLog.ChildNodes)
{
if (xLog2.Name == "ERRORs")
{
foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode xLog3 in xLog2.ChildNodes)
{
if (xLog3.Name == "ErrorCode")
{
// Do something
}
if (xLog3.Name == "Description")
{
// Do something
}
}
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}
}
}
}

Windows Phone 7 set resource string value to .xml

Is it possible to set a string in .resx to a .xml that is located in my project?
For instance,
Name = FileName Value = Project.Objects.File.xml Comments = my xml file
and then parse through the resource Name instead of "file.xml" entering something like Resource.Filename?
var streamInfo = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri(Resource.FileName, UriKind.Relative));
XDocument xdoc;
using (var s = streamInfo.Stream)
xdoc = XDocument.Load(s);
Im looking to do something like this, but obviously this is not working :(
Answering my own question but received a lack of response on here...
Turns out I did not need to to set a FilePath for the Value on the FileName string. Simply setting the value to examplefile.xml, allowed for the ResourceStream to work properly.

XMLWriter issues in C#

My issue is that I can't have the XML's file name be saved based on the text of a given field: here is the line:
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(#"{0}\ops\op-" + OpName.Text.Replace(" ", "_") + ".xml",
System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
The issue I get is that it can't find the path: C:\[stuff]\{0}\op\op-.xml and if I remove the {0}(in the code) I get can't find C:\op\op-.xml
I am needing it to find C:\[stuff]\op\ so it can make the file in that folder.
How could I change this line?
What does {0} represents in your path? XmlTextWriter constructor takes file path, not a formatted string. It would be much more readable if you'd prepare your file path in steps, eg. by utilizing Path.Combine method:
var fileName = string.Format("op-{0}.xml", OpName.Text.Replace(" ", "_"));
var rootDir = /* this would be {0} from your original example */
var filePath = Path.Combine(rootDir, "ops", fileName);
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(filePath, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
string additionalStr=OpName.Text.Replace(" ", "_");
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(additionalStr))
{
return;
//or throw error or make default file name depending on the required logic
}
string directoryPath=String.Format(#"{0}\ops\",dirPrefix);
bool isDirectoryExists=Directory.Exists(directoryPath);
if (!isDirectoryExists){
//required logic. for example set default directory
}
string fileName=additionalStr+".xml";
string filePath=Path.Combine(directoryPath,fileName);
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(filePath,System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);

An error occurred while parsing EntityName

I'm trying to load a xml document into an object XPathDocument in C#.
My xml documents include this line:
trés dégagée + rade
and when the parser arrives there it gives me this error:
"An error occurred while parsing EntityName"
I know that's normal cause of the character "é". Does anybody know how can I avoid this error... My idea is to insert into the xml document an entities declaration and after replace all special characters with entities...but it's long and I’m not sure if it's working. Do you have other ideas? Simpler?
Thanks a lot
Was about to post this and just then the servers went down. I think I've rewritten it correctly from memory:
I think that the problem lies within the fact that by default the XPathDocument uses an XmlTextReader to parse the contents of the supplied file and this XmlTextReader uses an EntityHandling setting of ExpandEntities.
In other words, when you rely on the default settings, an XmlTextReader will validate the input XML and try to resolve all entities. The better way is to do this manually by taking full control over the XmlReaderSettings (I always do it manually):
string myXMLFile = "SomeFile.xml";
string fileContent = LoadXML(myXMLFile);
private string LoadXML(string xml)
{
XPathDocument xDoc;
XmlReaderSettings xrs = new XmlReaderSettings();
// The following line does the "magic".
xrs.CheckCharacters = false;
using (XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(xml, xrs))
{
xDoc = new XPathDocument(xr);
}
if (xDoc != null)
{
XPathNavigator xNav = xDoc.CreateNavigator();
return xNav.OuterXml;
}
else
// Unable to load file
return null;
}
Typically this is caused by a mismatch between the encoding used to read the file and the files actually encoding.
At a guess I would say the file is UTF-8 encoded but you are reading it with a default encoding.
Try beefing up your question with more details to get a more definitive answer.

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