Question

I am getting character codes (' and &quote;) that are breaking my responses (showing 39; and uto;) when returning a string from an HttpWebRequest:

internal static void TranslateThis(Player player, string fromLang, string toLang, string text){
    try
    {
        string translated = null;
        HttpWebRequest hwr = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://translate.google.com/?langpair=" + fromLang + "|" + toLang + "&text=" + text.Replace(" ", "+") + "#");
        HttpWebResponse res = (HttpWebResponse)hwr.GetResponse();
        StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream());
        string html = sr.ReadToEnd();
        int a = html.IndexOf("onmouseout=\"this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'\">") + 47;
        int b = html.IndexOf("</span>",html.IndexOf("onmouseout=\"this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'\">") + 47);
        translated = html.Substring(a, b - a);
        if (translated.Length < (10 * text.Length)){
            if (player == Player.Console)
            {
                player.ParseMessage(translated, true);
            }
            else
            {
                player.ParseMessage(translated, false);
            }
        } else {
            player.Message("Usage: /translate [lang] [message]");
        }
    }
    catch
    {
        player.Message("Usage: /translate [lang] [message]");
    }
}

Answer 1

Discussions with another developer go me to try this before the last lot of comments. Here is what ended up working:

    internal static void TranslateThis(Player player, string fromLang, string toLang, string text){
        try
        {
            string translated = null;
            text = Regex.Replace(text, @"[^\w\.\'\s@-]", "");
            HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://translate.google.com/?langpair=" + fromLang + "|" + toLang + "&text=" + text.Replace(" ", "+") + "#");

            request.MaximumAutomaticRedirections = 4;
            request.MaximumResponseHeadersLength = 4;

            request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
            HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

            Stream receiveStream = response.GetResponseStream();

            StreamReader readStream = new StreamReader(receiveStream, Encoding.UTF7);
            String html = readStream.ReadToEnd() + "";
            int a = html.IndexOf("onmouseout=\"this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'\">") + 47;
            int b = html.IndexOf("</span>",html.IndexOf("onmouseout=\"this.style.backgroundColor='#fff'\">") + 47);
            translated = html.Substring(a, b - a);
            response.Close();
            readStream.Close();
            if (translated.Length < (10 * text.Length))
            {
                translated = translated.Replace("&#39", "'");
                translated = Regex.Replace(translated, @"[^\w\.\'\s@-]", "");
                if (player == Player.Console)
                {
                    player.ParseMessage(translated, true);
                }
                else
                {
                    player.ParseMessage(translated, false);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                player.Message("Usage: /translate [lang] [message]");
            }
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            player.Message("Error:" + ex.ToString());

        }
   }