Decoding string using HtmlDecode or Escape

Question

EDIT - Modified based on the answer:

okay here is what I modified based on the answer:

here is the string.

"November is Fruit's Fresh."    

here is what I'm doing:

    static string EscapeCharacters(string txt)
    {
        string encodedTxt = HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(txt);
        return HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(encodedTxt);
    }

    string _decodedTxt = EscapeCharacters("November is Fruit's Fresh.");

when it returns I'm still getting the same text November is Fruit's Fresh.

END EDIT

I tried using HttpUtility.HtmlDecode from System.Web and also tried using SecurityElement.Escape but it does not escapes anything correctly.

so I end-up writing my own replace method something like this:

    static string EscapeXMLCharacters(string txt)
    {
        string _txt = txt.Replace("&amp;", "&").Replace("&lt;", "<").Replace("&gt;", ">").Replace("&quot;", "\"").Replace("&apos;", "'").Replace("&#38;", "&").Replace("&#60;", "<").Replace("&#62;", ">").Replace("&#34;", "\\").Replace("&#39;", "'");
        return _txt;
    }

it does work in my situation but its hard to cover everything and in my situation I have some European characters like í``(í) or é (é)

Is there a utility method built-in .Net that take cares of any special characters?

Answer 1

You can use HtmlEncode to encode the string and then you can use HtmlDecode to return the original value:

string x = "éí&";
string encoded = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(x);
Console.WriteLine(encoded);  //éí&

string decoded = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(encoded);
Console.WriteLine(decoded);  //éí&

With your update, you just need to decode the string:

String decoded = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlDecode("November is Fruit's Fresh.");
Console.WriteLine(decoded);   //November is Fruit's Fresh.

Answer 2

tagText = SecurityElement.Escape(tagText);

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.securityelement.escape.aspx

or

 System.Net.WebUtility.HtmlDecode(textContent);