Remove special character from DataTable

Question

I've a DataTable which I use to write it to Excel using below code. I use using ClosedXML.Excel to export it to Excel

var worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add(dataTable, "Report");

Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;  filename="Report.xlsx");

using (MemoryStream MyMemoryStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                workbook.SaveAs(MyMemoryStream);
                MyMemoryStream.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream);
                MyMemoryStream.Close();
            }

Response.Flush();
Response.End();

The above code throws error for the special character: '', hexadecimal value 0x1A, is an invalid character. I'm unable to copy the special character here. So please apologize.

I saw below post to replace the special character in the post C# hexadecimal value 0x12, is an invalid character

static string ReplaceHexadecimalSymbols(string txt)
{
string r = "[\x00-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F\x26]";
return Regex.Replace(txt, r,"",RegexOptions.Compiled);
}

Could anyone guide me on how I can convert DataTable value to string and back again from String to DataTable.

Or please let me know if there is any other approach to tackle this special character issue?

Answer 1

If you need to replace the invalid string values in the DataTable you can do something like the following:

foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < dt.Columns.Count; i++)
    {
        if(dt.Columns[i].DataType == typeof(string))
            row[i] = ReplaceHexadecimalSymbols((string)row[i]);
    }
}

Do it before you add it to the workbook