Encode XML

[Warrick FitzGerald]

Hi All,

When sending an XML \ SOAP request, if the value looks as follows:

<TEST> My Test & Son </TEST>

How should the & be encoded. What is this "TYPE" of encoding called, and
where can I find a spec on which values should and should not be encoded
.... I know the W3C will have something but I can't for the life of me
decode it from their docs.

Thanks
Warrick

 

[Bob Foster]

When sending an XML \ SOAP request, if the value looks as follows:

<TEST> My Test & Son </TEST>

How should the & be encoded.
&amp;

What is this "TYPE" of encoding called

Predefined entities. You could also use numeric character references like
& but that requires looking up (uni) codes.

and
where can I find a spec on which values should and should not be encoded

XML 1.0 spec.

... I know the W3C will have something but I can't for the life of me
decode it from their docs.

To boil it down, two characters need to be escaped if they appear in
attribute values or text outside of CDATA sections:

& as &amp; or equivalent
< as &lt; or equivalent

Two other characters are sometimes handy to escape:

" as &quot; or equivalent
' as &apos; or equivalent

The other predefined entity is &gt; but AFAIK you never _need_ to use it.

Bob Foster

 

[Arto V. Viitanen]

Warrick> Hi All, When sending an XML \ SOAP request, if the value looks as
Warrick> follows:

Warrick> <TEST> My Test & Son </TEST>

Warrick> How should the & be encoded. What is this "TYPE" of encoding
Warrick> called, and where can I find a spec on which values should and
Warrick> should not be encoded ... I know the W3C will have something but I
Warrick> can't for the life of me decode it from their docs.

I am not sure if it is enought, but ZSI (a Python SOAP package) uses
following encodings for text:

& &amp;
< &lt;
"> &gt;
\015

and following for attributes

& &amp;
< &lt;
" &quot;
\011
\012

\015

(from file compat.py)

 

[arnold m. slotnik]

The other predefined entity is &gt; but AFAIK you never _need_
to use it.

Not quite "never". If you have the string ]]> in content, but not as
the end of a CDATA section, you need to escape the >.

 

[Richard Tobin]

Not quite "never". If you have the string ]]> in content, but not as
the end of a CDATA section, you need to escape the >.

Or one of the ]s.

-- Richard