Removing CDATA tag from XmlNode

Question

I have an XmlNode which represents the following xml for example:

XmlNode xml.innerText =
<book>
<name><![CDATA[Harry Potter]]</name>
<author><![CDATA[J.K. Rolling]]</author>
</book>

I want to change this node so that it'll contain the following:

XmlNode xml.innerText =
<book>
<name>Harry Potter</name>
<author>J.K. Rolling</author>
</book>

Any ideas?
Thanks!

is their any specific need of removing tags or you just want to read values? And by the way always post the correct sample. You are missing closing cdata tags in your sample xml. — Ehsan, Aug 04 '13 at 12:30
I am not a Harry Potter fan, but seeing J.K. Rowling's name misspelled breaks my heart. — Nurp, Aug 21 '18 at 15:19

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '13 at 12:28

9

well, if it's exactly how you put it, then it's easy:

xml.innerText = xml.innerText.Replace("![CDATA[","").Replace("]]","");
xmlDoc.Save();// xmlDoc is your xml document

answered Aug 04 '13 at 12:28

No Idea For Name

Unfortunately, it's not exactly how I put it. It's nested more complicately, and this code ( which I've tried ) seems to remove other major parts as well – Niv Aug 04 '13 at 12:30
@Niv can you share more of your code or give us more information? it's string manipulation you want i think, but i don't know what exact manipulation you need. i can help if you have more info – No Idea For Name Aug 04 '13 at 12:35
2

This wound up working, just with a tiny modification : instead of innerText, I needed to use innerXML. Tnx! – Niv Aug 04 '13 at 12:37
1

The cdata tags are there for a good reason, to escape invalid xml characters: <,>,',", and &. If you go this route you should escape these characters using something like this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.securityelement.escape.aspx – dana Aug 04 '13 at 12:49

Ehsan · Answer 2 · 2013-08-04T12:39:33.027

1

I suggest you to read your entire xml and rewrite it. You can read values without cdata like this

foreach (var child in doc.Root.Elements())
    {
         string name = child.Name;
         string value = child.Value
    }

edited Aug 04 '13 at 12:39

answered Aug 04 '13 at 12:28

Ehsan

2

It's possible that the XML is supplied from a third party and needs to be cleaned up. – Carl Onager Oct 09 '13 at 10:45
One reason to remove CDATA is that libxml doesn't handle CDATA. This would require him to take data received from a third party and make it a format that will work or remove it. See [gnome and CDATA](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2008-September/msg00092.html). Also, [Gnome and CDATA also](http://www.xmlsoft.org/search.php?query=cdata&submit=Search). – Michele Feb 12 '16 at 15:41

2 Answers2