Xelement attribute value loses its encoding

Question

Suppose we have this code:

string actualvalue = "<a>";
string abc = "<firstnode><secondnode abc=\""+ actualvalue + "\"></secondnode></firstnode>";

XElement item2 = XElement.Parse(abc);
foreach (var item in item2.Descendants("secondnode"))
{
     string aftergettingitfromXlement = item.Attribute("abc").Value;
     ///so aftergettingitfromXlement  = "<a>" which is not correct i want to have actual value which is encoded 
}

Any idea how can I get the actual value, I don't want to encode again. Why is the encoding lost?

Answer 1

Try this instead:

string actualvalue = "<a>";

The XDocument implemenation assumes that the value in your xml string is escaped. To read more about escpae characters in xml: What characters do I need to escape in XML documents?

To do a general replace of ampersands in a string you could write:

string actualvalue = "<a>";
actualvalue = actualvalue.Replace("&", "&");