Ampersand in XML url is not passed through - c#

I'm having hard-time fixing this little problem of ampersand (&) in the url... I'm serializing XML as shown below...
var ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(response));
using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(url))
{
response employeeResults = (response)ser.Deserialize(reader); //<<error when i pass with ampersand
}
the above codes works fine if there is no & in the url otherwise it throws me an error (see below)
i have no problem serializing this url:
http://api.host.com/api/employees.xml/?&search=john
I'm having problem with this url:
http://api.host.com/api/employees.xml/?&max=20&page=10
The error i'm getting is:
`There is an error in XML document (1, 389).`
PS: I did tried passing & and also tried with &#38 or #026 or & - no luck.


This XML isn't well-formed:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<response xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Api">
<meta>
<status>200</status>
<message />
<resultSet>
<Checked>true</Checked>
</resultSet>
<pagination>
<count>1</count>
<page>1</page>
<max>1</max>
<curUri>http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5</curUri>
<prevUri i:nil="true"/>
<nextUri>http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5&page=2</nextUri>
</pagination>
</meta>
<results i:type="ArrayOfemployeeItem">
<empItem>
<Id>CTR3242</Id>
<name>john</name>
......
</empItem>
</results>
</response>
You must escape & character or put entire string in CDATA, e.g.:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<response xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Api">
<meta>
<status>200</status>
<message />
<resultSet>
<Checked>true</Checked>
</resultSet>
<pagination>
<count>1</count>
<page>1</page>
<max>1</max>
<curUri><![CDATA[http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5]]></curUri>
<prevUri i:nil="true"/>
<nextUri><![CDATA[http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5&page=2]]></nextUri>
</pagination>
</meta>
<results i:type="ArrayOfemployeeItem">
<empItem>
<Id>CTR3242</Id>
<name>john</name>
......
</empItem>
</results>
</response>
If you are dealing with some third-party system and not able to get proper XML response, you have to do some pre-processing.
Maybe the simplest way is just replace all & with & using string.Replace method.
Or use this regex &(?!amp;) to replace all & excluding correct ones like &.


Have you tried to wrap the Attribute with <![CDATA[yourAttribute]]> ?
& is not allowed in xml
deserialize-xml-with-ampersand-using-xmlserializer

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I want to remove all the attribute values with "http" like below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<env:Envelope
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I have tried several ways but none of them has worked for me. Can anyone suggest what is fastest way to do it in VB.NET/C#.
The actual response is very large (approx 100000 lines of XML minimum) and using for each will consume a good amount of time. Is there any parsing method or LINQ query method which can do it faster.

I got the way to do it using Regex as below:
Return Regex.Replace(xmlDoc, "((?<=<|<\/)|(?<= ))[A-Za-z0-9]+:| xmlns(:[A-Za-z0-9]+)?="".*?""", "")
It serves my purpose completely. Thanks Cleptus for your quick reference.

XML Name Cannot Begin with the "=" Character

I've read through the similar post of % character but it seems the other issues can be solved in the header line. Are there certain characters not allowed in XML or do I need to format the document another way (In my case the "=" character is giving me trouble when trying to read in the document in C#)?
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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</data>
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<ocrstring></ocrstring>
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What does <![CDATA[]]> in XML mean?
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<offer>
<data id="Salary">
<ocrstring>which is equal to $60,000.00 if working 40 hours per week</ocrstring>
<rule><![CDATA[.*(([+-]?\$[0-9]{1,3}(?:,?[0-9]{3})*\.[0-9]{2}))]]></rule>
<output></output>
</data>
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<ocrstring></ocrstring>
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</data>
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How to extract a node from xml string C#

I have am xml string like mentioned below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<NodeA xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.air-watch.com/webapi/resources">
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<Link xsi:type="link">
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<TotalResults>100</TotalResults>
<NodeB>
<NodeC>
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<B>valueB</B>
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XDocument doc=XDocument.Parse(xmlstr);
String response=doc.Elements("question")
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.Single()
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.Value; ?
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<response>
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{"'=' is an unexpected token. The expected token is ';'. Line 136, position 53."}

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This is the valid XML:
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<response>
<status>
<code>000</code>
<message>Successfully completed</message>
</status>
<reports>
<report>
<id>9973</id>
<url>http://www.google.com/search?q=guns&client=safari&safe=active</url>
</report>
</reports>
</response>
Check your XML export function to make sure it escapes the URL properly.

How to read nested XML using xDocument in Silver light?

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<NumberReturned>10</NumberReturned>
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Thanks,
Subhendu

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My suggestion would be to fix the procedure generating this invalid XML in the first place. Another suggestion is to never generate a XML file manually but use an appropriate tool for this (XmlWriter, XDocument, ...)

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