Question

I’m trying to parse the xml document returned from this link but I get an exception of type ComException with the following message:

Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

Here’s the code:

        try
        {
            //...
            string EPGXML = await DownloadAsync(url);

            var xmldoc = new XmlDocument();
            xmldoc.LoadXml(EPGXML); //this line throws the exception
            //...rest of the code
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
            //I get here...
        }

Could you please help me why I get this message and how can I fix this? Thanks.

EDIT:

I’m reading the source of the XML using this function (maybe I’m wrong here and I should do something to get the string in UTF-8, because I don’t see the German characters in the string in debug mode (watch window):

    private async static Task<string> DownloadPageAsync(string url)
    {
        try
        {
            HttpClientHandler handler = new HttpClientHandler();
            handler.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
            handler.AllowAutoRedirect = true;
            handler.UseCookies = true;
            HttpClient client = new HttpClient(handler);
            client.MaxResponseContentBufferSize = 10000000;
            HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync(url);
            response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

            string responseBody = response.Content.ReadAsString();
            return responseBody;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            return "error" + ex.Message;
        }
    }

Answer 1

The XML you provided is not valid, at least that’s what Firefox says:

Erreur d’analyse XML : mal formé
Emplacement : http://www.onlinetvrecorder.com/?aktion=epg_export&format=xml&btn_ok=OK&>stations=3SAT,ANIXE,ARD&from=30.11.2011&to=30.11.2011
Numéro de ligne 218, Colonne 193 :

(Sorry for the french)

Looking a bit closer, it looks like the parser breaks on the word “Plötzlich”, on the character “ö”.

You should use CDATA to prevent this:

<![CDATA[Your text here can contain special chars]]>