Question

Consider the following C# code:

XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(pathFichier, null);
writer.WriteStartDocument();
writer.WriteDocType("plist", "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN", "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd", null);
writer.WriteStartElement("plist");
writer.WriteAttributeString("version", "1.0");
writer.WriteFullEndElement(); // plist
writer.Close();

A PList doctype is usually:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

The above code adds an empty subset at the end of the doctype string:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"[]>

The “[]” at the end screws with iOs’s parsing.

How can I get rid of it using XmlTextWriter ?

Should I just reopened the file and delete the “[]” ?

Answer 1

You can derive a class for XmlTextWriter and override the WriteDocType method.

It’d look something like this:

public override void WriteDocType(string name, string pubid, string sysid, string subset)
{
    this.wrappedWriter.WriteRaw("-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN", "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd");
}

EDIT by the guy who asked the question. Here’s the code I wrote to make it work.

The WriteDocType override:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace your.namespace {
    public class PListWriter : System.Xml.XmlTextWriter  {

        public PListWriter(string filename, System.Text.Encoding encoding) : base(filename, encoding) { }

        public override void WriteDocType(string name = "", string pubid = "", string sysid = "", string subset = "") {
            this.WriteRaw("<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC \"-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN\" \"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd\">");
        }
    }
}

Its usage in the wild:

PListWriter writer = new PListWriter(pathFichier, null);    
writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
writer.WriteStartDocument();
writer.WriteDocType();
writer.WriteStartElement("plist");
writer.WriteAttributeString("version", "1.0");
writer.WriteFullEndElement(); // plist
writer.Close();