Question

If I have a string which may contain any characters (including ‘/’, ‘&’,etc…) how do convert it safely into XML that can be stored like this:

<myelement>mystring</myelement>

Does it need to be CDATA, or can I easily convert it using a ruby function?

Answer 1

In Ruby 1.9.2 to escape XML special characters in Strings, use the ‘encode’ method.

Example, if you have:

my_string = 'this is "my" complicated <String>'

For XML attributes use:

"<node attr=#{my_string.encode(:xml => :attr)} />"

Generates:

<node attr="this is &quot;my&quot; complicated &lt;String&gt;" />

For XML text use:

"<node>#{my_string.encode(:xml => :text)}</node>"

Generates:

<node>this is "my" complicated &lt;String&gt;</node>