Cannot replace double quotes

[George]

Hello,

I have some XML that is returned to my application from another vendor that
I cannot change before it gets to me. I can only alter it after it gets to my
application. That being said, I am having a problem loading the XML correctly
into my app.

Here is the code:
====================================
Dim sPaymentXML as String
sPaymentXML = Request.Form("PaymentXML").ToString

'Create the XML Document
Dim xmlDoc As XmlDocument
xmlDoc = New XmlDocument()

'Load the Xml file
xmlDoc.LoadXml(sPaymentXML)
====================================

Whenever I run this code, it fails on the last line and gives an error of
something like:
The data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.

I believe this is because something is off in the XML. So, I am attempting
to replace the quotes that are in the XML doc with anything, but when the
code runs, it just ignores the Replace command, and after several different
attempts, I cannot get the code to recognize the double quotes that need to
be replaced.

Here is the code I add for replacing the quotes in the XML:
'Replace the quotes
sPaymentXML = sPaymentXML.Replace("""", "blah")

I have also tried outputting the XML directly to a Label on the screen so I
can examine it and it is completely valid. I have even copied the xml that
appeared in the Label, and pasted it into VisualStudio, and run the LoadXML
code again using the newly pasted code, and that works.

Any ideas??

 

[Rory Becker]

Hello george,

I saw this blog post just now and thought of you...

http://blog.madskristensen.dk/post/Data-at-the-root-level-is-invalid.aspx

 

[George]

Thanks for the response, Rory.
I still didn't have any luck after reading that post, though.

I went back and tried a few million different approaches and finally found a
way that would work. The problem does seem to be extra characters that are
coming over, but I couldn't be certain if it was the BOM or if it was
something else.

First, I had outputted what I was getting from Request.Form("PaymentXML") to
a label on my page, and it looked like perfectly fine XML.

Next, I decided to output it to a file as other sites have suggested. So, I
created a temp file, wrote the contents of Request.Form("PaymentXML") to
that, and examined it. What it was doing was writing all of the special
characters that make up the xml tags in HTML character code format. For
example, the "<" character was being written as "<", the ">" character was
being written as ">", and the double quotes were being written as """.
So, I did Replace on those, and then ran that data back into my application,
and it worked.

Here is the code I'm talking about:
===================================
'Get xml from vendor
sPaymentXML = Request.Form("PaymentXML")

'Convert special character codes
sPaymentXML = sPaymentXML.Replace("<", "<")
sPaymentXML = sPaymentXML.Replace(">", ">")
sPaymentXML = sPaymentXML.Replace(""", """")

'Create temp file
Dim sTempFileName As String = System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName()
Dim fstreamTemp As New System.IO.FileStream(sTempFileName,
IO.FileMode.Create, IO.FileAccess.ReadWrite)
Dim fwriterTemp As New IO.StreamWriter(fstreamTemp)

'Write the XMl to the temp file
With fwriterTemp
Try
.BaseStream.Seek(0, IO.SeekOrigin.End)
.WriteLine(sPaymentXML)
Finally
.Close()
End Try
End With

fstreamTemp.Close()

Dim xmlDoc As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument
xmlDoc.Load(sTempFileName)
===================================

When xmlDoc.Load runs now, there is no error message and I can traverse the
XMLDocument just fine. After I'm done with the XMLDocument, I delete the temp
file. I'm still not sure why I have to create a temp file, write the replaced
contents of sPaymentXML into it, then load that into an new XMLDocument just
to have it work.
You would think I could just take the replaced contents of sPaymentXML and
use xmlDoc.LoadXML(sPaymentXML) to achieve the same result, but that doesn't
work.

Just thought I'd post my finding in case it helped someone else.

 

[George]

Ooops, it looks like the formatting of this post did not allow me to show the
HTML character codes.

When I said:
For example, the "<" character was being written as "<", the ">" character was
being written as ">", and the double quotes were being written as """.

It really should say that:
< = & lt ; (without the spaces)

= & gt ; (without the spaces)

" = & quot ; (without the spaces)

 

[Rory Becker]

Hello george,

Try...

 

[George]

Hi Rory,

Thanks for the reply.
This still generates the same error message:
"Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1."

Here is how I added it to the code:
-------------------------------------------------
'Get xml from vendor
sPaymentXML = Request.Form("PaymentXML")
sPaymentXML =
HttpContext.Current.Server.HtmlDecode(Request.Form("PaymentXML"))

Dim xmldoc As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument
xmldoc.LoadXml(sPaymentXML)
-------------------------------------------------

I did have to change from "System.Web.HttpServerUtility.HtmlDecode" to
"HttpContext.Current.Server.HtmlDecode" because when I used the first one I
was getting a message that "Reference to a non-shared member requires an
object reference." But once I changed that, there was no problem with that
line of code, I'm just not sure that it still created the XML as LoadXML() is
looking for.

 

[George]

I should say though, that the new code you mentioned:
sPaymentXML =
System.Web.HttpServerUtility.HtmlDecode(Request.Form("PaymentXML"))

does work when I am creating the temp file and loading it using
xmlDoc.Load(). It just doesn't help with the xmldoc.LoadXML() function.