Question

I have a bit of XML as follows:

<section>
  <description>
    <![CDATA[
      This is a "description"
      that I have formatted
    ]]>
  </description>
</section>

I’m accessing it using curXmlNode.SelectSingleNode("description").InnerText but the value returns

\r\n      This is a "description"\r\n      that I have formatted

instead of

This is a "description" that I have formatted.

Is there a simple way to get that sort of output from a CDATA section? Leaving the actual CDATA tag out seems to have it return the same way.

Answer 1

You can use Linq to read CDATA.

XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Load("YourXml.xml");
xDoc.DescendantNodes().OfType<XCData>().Count();

It’s very easy to get the Value this way.

Here’s a good overview on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb308960.aspx

for .NET 2.0, you probably just have to pass it through Regex:

     string xml = @"<section>
                      <description>
                        <![CDATA[
                          This is a ""description""
                          that I have formatted
                        ]]>
                      </description>
                    </section>";

        XPathDocument xDoc = new XPathDocument(new StringReader(xml.Trim()));
        XPathNavigator nav = xDoc.CreateNavigator();
        XPathNavigator descriptionNode = 
            nav.SelectSingleNode("/section/description");

        string desiredValue = 
            Regex.Replace(descriptionNode.Value
                                     .Replace(Environment.NewLine, String.Empty)
                                     .Trim(),
                @"\s+", " ");

that trims your node value, replaces newlines with empty, and replaces 1+ whitespaces with one space. I don’t think there’s any other way to do it, considering the CDATA is returning significant whitespace.