Question

I’m definitely missing something. I have an XML file that stores HTML snippets, as below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<presentation>
  <slide id="1" title="Test Slide 1">
    <h1>This is test slide 1.</h1>
    <p>Information on test slide.</p>
  </slide>
  <slide id="2" title="Test Slide 2">
    <h2> This is test slide 2.</h2>
    <p>Information on test slide.</p>
  </slide>
  <slide id="3" title="Test Slide 3">
    <h3> This is test slide 3.</h3>
    <p>Information on test slide.</p>
  </slide>
</presentation>

I’m building a ASP.net form that allows me to edit the contents of the “slides” and then save my changes. In order to do that, first i find the appropriate slide by id. Then I remove all the contents of the slide with RemoveNodes(), and then attempt to write the new contents with WriteRaw(contents).

    XDocument xmlDoc = XDocument.Load(filepath);
    XElement slide = xmlDoc.Descendants("slide").First(el => el.Attribute("id").Value.Equals(id));
    slide.RemoveNodes();
    using (var writer = slide.CreateWriter())
    {
        // contents are retrieved from a TextBox
        writer.WriteRaw(contents);
    }
    xmlDoc.Save(filepath);

The code runs without error. However, when I check the xml file, the < and > characters for the html tags have been converted to < and >.

...
  <slide id="1" title="Test Slide 1">&lt;h1&gt;This is test slide 1.&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Information on test slide.&lt;/p&gt;&gt;</slide>
...

I’m guessing that another object is escaping the characters in the background. SaveOptions.DisableFormatting doesn’t change the behavior. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

Sorry, but XmlWriter.WriteRaw works on XmlWriters writing to a stream or file but not when populating objects in System.Xml or System.Xml.Linq.
Use slide.Add(XElement.Parse("<dummy>" + contents + "</dummy>").Nodes()) instead.