Ampersand in XML url is not passed through

Question

I'm having hard-time fixing this little problem of ampersand (&) in the url... I'm serializing XML as shown below...

    var ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(response));
    using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(url))
    {
        response employeeResults = (response)ser.Deserialize(reader); //<<error when i pass with ampersand
    }

the above codes works fine if there is no & in the url otherwise it throws me an error (see below)

i have no problem serializing this url:

http://api.host.com/api/employees.xml/?&search=john

I'm having problem with this url:

http://api.host.com/api/employees.xml/?&max=20&page=10

The error i'm getting is:

`There is an error in XML document (1, 389).`

PS: I did tried passing & and also tried with &#38 or #026 or & - no luck.

Answer 1

This XML isn't well-formed:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<response xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Api">
  <meta>
    <status>200</status>
    <message />
    <resultSet>
      <Checked>true</Checked>
    </resultSet>
    <pagination>
      <count>1</count>
      <page>1</page>
      <max>1</max>
      <curUri>http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5</curUri>
      <prevUri i:nil="true"/>
      <nextUri>http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5&page=2</nextUri>
    </pagination>
  </meta>
  <results i:type="ArrayOfemployeeItem">
    <empItem>
      <Id>CTR3242</Id>
      <name>john</name>
      ......
    </empItem>
  </results>
</response>

You must escape & character or put entire string in CDATA, e.g.:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<response xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Api">
  <meta>
    <status>200</status>
    <message />
    <resultSet>
      <Checked>true</Checked>
    </resultSet>
    <pagination>
      <count>1</count>
      <page>1</page>
      <max>1</max>
      <curUri><![CDATA[http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5]]></curUri>
      <prevUri i:nil="true"/>
      <nextUri><![CDATA[http://api.host.com/employee.xml/?&max=5&page=2]]></nextUri>
    </pagination>
  </meta>
  <results i:type="ArrayOfemployeeItem">
    <empItem>
      <Id>CTR3242</Id>
      <name>john</name>
      ......
    </empItem>
  </results>
</response>

If you are dealing with some third-party system and not able to get proper XML response, you have to do some pre-processing.

Maybe the simplest way is just replace all & with & using string.Replace method.

Or use this regex &(?!amp;) to replace all & excluding correct ones like &.

Answer 2

Have you tried to wrap the Attribute with <![CDATA[yourAttribute]]> ? & is not allowed in xml

deserialize-xml-with-ampersand-using-xmlserializer