Question

I have some string values in a dataset. In my composite control, in RenderContent I add dataset values to html table cells using span tags. It works great until I have an xml string in my dataset.

In my RenderControl I have code something like:

output.Write(@"<span id=""valueSpan{0}"" action=""edit"" type=""text"">{1}</span>", this.ID + row["ID"], row["Value"]);

row[“Value”] contains string value of:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><testdata>need to display this xml string in span</testdata>

The result I see is “need to display this xml string in span” not the XML data as “<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><testdata>need to display this xml string in span</testdata>“. I think I need to let html know that this is just a value. But how???

Answer 1

You’ll need to escape the < and > characters, transforming them to their corresponding character entities < and >. Use Server.HtmlEncode() to do this for you:

output.Write(
   @"<span id=""valueSpan{0}{1}"" action=""edit"" type=""text"">{2}</span>",
   this.ID, row["ID"], Server.HtmlEncode(row["Value"].ToString())
);

(Also, note that I removed the concatenation this.ID + row["ID"] in favor of a string.Format() style syntax.)