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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T02:12:30+00:00

Im using the classes in System.Linq.Xml to build up an XML object. But the

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Im using the classes in System.Linq.Xml to build up an XML object. But the API I am working with require me to put straight HTML code into a tag:

<message><html><body>...</body></html></message>

I cant seem to figure out how to do this using XElement.

new XElement("message", myHtmlStringVariable);

That just escapes all the HTML characters

new XElement("message", new XCData(myHtmlStringVariable));

That wraps the HTML in a <![CDATA[…]]> which the API doesnt like.

So is there a way to insert HTML directly into an XElement’s content?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can do this:

    string html = "<html><body></body></html>";
XElement message = new XElement("message", XElement.Parse(html));

    This does require that the HTML is well-formed XML and has only a single root element.

    If you have an HTML snippet with multiple root elements, you can always create the element like this:

    string html = "<p>foo</p><p>bar</p>";
XElement message = XElement.Parse("<message>" + html + "</message>");

    The requirement for well-formed XML still exists. This means you must have empty elements like <br /> and not <br>. There is no way around that if you want to embed HTML directly in XML.

    Additionally, if it’s possible and your API accepts it, I would recommend giving the HTML elements the proper XHTML namespace:

    string html = "<html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\"><body></body></html>";
XElement message = new XElement("message", XElement.Parse(html));

    This produces XML like this:

    <message>
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <body></body>
  </html>
</message>
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