Issue with XDocument and the BOM (Byte Order Mark)

Question

Is there any way to output the contents of an XDocument without the BOM? When reading the output with Flash, it causes errors.

possible duplicate of [XDocument: saving XML to file without BOM](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4942825/xdocument-saving-xml-to-file-without-bom) — Kevin Panko, Feb 28 '14 at 19:32

Chris Wenham · Accepted Answer · 2008-10-01T20:01:11.220

9

If you're writing the XML with an XmlWriter, you can set the Encoding to one that has been initialized to leave out the BOM.

EG: System.Text.UTF8Encoding's constructor takes a boolean to specify whether you want the BOM, so:

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create("foo.xml");
writer.Settings.Encoding = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);
myXDocument.WriteTo(writer);

Would create an XmlWriter with UTF-8 encoding and without the Byte Order Mark.

edited Oct 01 '08 at 20:01

answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:07

Chris Wenham

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Are you sure? I don't get a compile error, and the documentation says it isn't read only: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlwritersettings.encoding.aspx – Chris Wenham Oct 01 '08 at 19:32
how do I get from here to a string? – John Sheehan Oct 01 '08 at 19:39
You could use Chris's method below to write to a MemoryStream instead. – Chris Wenham Oct 01 '08 at 20:04

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 10 '11 at 16:16

5

Slight mod to Chris Wenham's answer.

You can't modify the encoding once the XmlWriter is created, but you can set it using the XmlWriterSettings when creating the XmlWriter

XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
settings.Encoding = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false); 

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create("foo.xml", settings); 
myXDocument.WriteTo(writer);

edited Apr 10 '11 at 16:16

Chris Wenham

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answered Jun 24 '10 at 08:22

Reed Rector

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 27 '09 at 11:08

I couldn't add a comment above, but if anyone uses Chris Wenham's suggestion, remember to Dispose of the writer! I spent some time wondering why my output was truncated, and that was the reason.

Suggest a using(XmlWriter...) {...} change to Chris' suggestion

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:29

2

Kind of a combination of postings, maybe something like this:


MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(ms, new UTF8Encoding(false));
xmlDocument.Save(writer);

answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:29

Chris Shaffer

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 02 '08 at 19:58

As stated, this problem has a bad smell.

According to this support note, Flash uses the BOM to disambiguate between UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE, which is as it should be. So you shouldn't be getting an error from Flash: XDocument produces UTF16 encoded well-formed XML, and Macromedia claims that Flash can read UTF16 encoded well-formed XML.

This makes me suspect that whatever the problem is that you're encountering, it probably isn't being caused by the BOM. If it were me, I'd dig around more, with the expectation that the actual problem is somewhere else.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:00

0

You could probably use System.Text.Encoding.Convert() on the output; Just as something to try, not something I have tested.

answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:00

Chris Shaffer

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:03

0

Convert it to a string, then remove the mark yourself.

answered Oct 01 '08 at 19:03

NotMe

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Issue with XDocument and the BOM (Byte Order Mark)

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