Question

I’m using XML database which contains names. Unfortunately I’m living in Czech Republic and there are lot of czech letters in czech names. These letters are ě š č ř ž ý á í é ú ů. Application crashes during parsing data everytime when database contains one of these letters.

Debugger shows error:”Invalid character in given encoding. Line 4. Position 15″.

My XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Players>
 <Player>
  <Name>Karel Čubera</Name>
 </Player>
 <Player>
  <Name>Jiri Vontubas</Name>
 </Player>
 <Player>
  <Name>Jan Vernovsky</Name>
 </Player>
</Players>

My App:

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        XDocument xmlDoc = XDocument.Load("C://Database.xml");
        var XMLdata = from singlePlayer in xmlDoc.Descendants("Player")
                      select new
                      {
                          Name = singlePlayer.Element("Name").Value,
                      };

        foreach (var singlePlayer in XMLdata)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Player name: " + singlePlayer.Name);
            Console.WriteLine();
        }            
        Console.Read();
    }

Is Linq to XML even able to read these symbols ? I’ve encountered same problem in windows form application. I realy need these leters without them it just sucks. 🙂 Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Your XML document is wrongly encoded. Try opening it in Notepad, do a File->Save As and select UTF-8. Then reopen it and check if everything is correct.

As a sidenote, be aware that the font used in the Console isn’t always able to show all the Unicode characters. If you put a breakpoint you’ll be able to check if the file has been correctly loaded. For example it shows to me Karel Čubera as Karel Cubera