How can I stop XDocument from resolving my character entities-CodePudding

I am reading XML and manipulating the data in various ways. However, many of the XML documents contain ISO character entities. I need to retain these as their entity codes, but when XDocument reads the XML file, it immediately resolves the entities into their respective symbols.

How can I prevent this?

Here is a very small sample of XML with 5 entities listed in a table. I need to read the file but keep the entity codes:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc>
<table>
    <title>iso-amsa.ent</title>
    <tgroup cols="3">
        <colspec colname="col1" colwidth="0.50*"/>
        <colspec colname="col2" align="center" colwidth="0.40*"/>
        <colspec colname="col3" colwidth="2.20*"/>
        <thead>
            <row><entry><para>ISO Entity Name</para></entry><entry><para>Unicode Entity</para></entry><entry><para>Description</para></entry></row>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <row><entry><para>cularr</para></entry><entry><para>&#x21B6;</para></entry><entry><para>ANTICLOCKWISE TOP SEMICIRCLE ARROW</para></entry></row>
            <row><entry><para>curarr</para></entry><entry><para>&#x21B7;</para></entry><entry><para>CLOCKWISE TOP SEMICIRCLE ARROW</para></entry></row>
            <row><entry><para>dArr</para></entry><entry><para>&#x21D3;</para></entry><entry><para>DOWNWARDS DOUBLE ARROW</para></entry></row>
            <row><entry><para>darr2</para></entry><entry><para>&#x21CA;</para></entry><entry><para>DOWNWARDS PAIRED ARROWS</para></entry></row>
            <row><entry><para>dharl</para></entry><entry><para>&#x21C3;</para></entry><entry><para>DOWNWARDS HARPOON WITH BARB LEFTWARDS</para></entry></row>
        </tbody>
    </tgroup>
</table>
</doc>

This is the very simple means in which I read the file (but I have tried various ways):

string fileName = "C:\MyTestFile.xml";

XDocument _doc = XDocument.Load(fileName);

As soon as the XML is read, it converts the entities to their symbols.

How can I prevent this?

CodePudding user response：

XDocument does not preserve the text encoding once the XML is loaded. The encoding is part of the base stream, not loaded XML.

If you want to re-encode those entities when you save the XML as a string, you need to use an XmlWriter with an Encoding

For example, using a MemoryStream

var ms = new MemoryStream();
using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(ms, new XmlWriterSettings {Encoding = Encoding.ASCII}))
{
    _doc.Save(writer);
}
Console.WriteLine(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(ms.GetBuffer(), 0, ms.Length));

Or using a FileStream

using (var fs = new FileStream(@"somePathHere", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write))
using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(fs, new XmlWriterSettings {Encoding = Encoding.ASCII}))
{
    _doc.Save(writer);
}