How do I include a CDATA section in a WCF client webservice call in .Net?

Question

I have been asked to create a wcf client which accesses a custom java webservice, which I can't modify. I need to consume a webservice method like:

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
  <s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <createDocument xmlns="http://www.dummyUrl.com/javaws">
      <version>
        ...
        <metadata>
          <attribute name="ConfigName">ConfigurationTemplateForModuleX</attribute>
          <attribute name="ConfigValue">This is a configuration string</attribute>
        </metadata>
        ...
      </version>
    </createDocument>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Inside the attribute "ConfigValue" I usually need to save strings, but I also need to be able to save an entire XML document inside the node as CDATA like:

        ...
        <metadata>
          <attribute name="ConfigName">ConfigurationTemplateForModuleX</attribute>
          <attribute name="ConfigValue">
          <![CDATA[
            <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
            <config>
               <title>Config Template for Module X</title>
               ...
            </config>
          ]]>
          </attribute>
        </metadata>
        ...

I created a service reference to my Visual Studio project to this webservice and the proxy classes were created and I can use the webservice as described in the first code section, but the problem is that the CDATA which I want to include in the request is automatically encoded and is therefore not usable anymore because I can not change the the target webservice:

 &lt;![CDATA[
   &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot; standalone=&quot;yes&quot;?&gt;
   &lt;config&gt;
     &lt;title&gt;Config Template for Module X&lt;/title&gt;
     ...
   &lt;/config&gt;
 ]]&gt;

I need somehow to modify the serilization of the XML-Text attribute, or supress the encoding.

Do you have any ideas how to solve this problem?

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 09 '21 at 01:01

One solution which is not very nice, but it works is to modify the generated C# service reference. Inside the partial class of the type I see something like this:

public partial class tKeyValuePair : object, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    
    private string keyField;
    
    private string valueField;
    
    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlAttributeAttribute(DataType="NMTOKEN")]
    public string key
    {
        get
        {
            return this.keyField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.keyField = value;
            this.RaisePropertyChanged("key");
        }
    }
    
    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTextAttribute()]
    public string Value
    {
        get
        {
            return this.valueField;
        }
        set
        {
            this.valueField = value;
            this.RaisePropertyChanged("Value");
        }
    }

Hint! I have created the reference with the following commandline, because the generated code is different from Visual Studio service reference:

svcutil http://server/service?wsdl /nologo /d:C:\temp\ /enableDataBinding /wrapped

When I modify the reference code of the "public string Value" and "private string valueField" to the type XmlNode[] it is possible over the C# code to create a XmlNode array with one XmlNode which has either the content of Text or the content of CDATA like:

XmlNode test = new XmlCDataSection("text in cdata");

This also works if your intention is to include valid XML as CData.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '15 at 07:55

1

Convert the XML into a Base64 string and transmit that instead. A simple re-conversion on the receiving end will give you the proper XML string.

answered Jun 11 '15 at 07:55

LocEngineer

2,847
1
16
28

The receiving end or consumer of the configuration is an internal java component which is not under my control. – Daniel Martens Jun 11 '15 at 08:01
Will the following answers work for you? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18067242/writing-cdata-in-asp-net-webapi http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1379888/how-do-you-serialize-a-string-as-cdata-using-xmlserializer ? – LocEngineer Jun 11 '15 at 08:11
1

I solved the problem, but on a different level. I got the information that on the server side jaxb is used and therefore it is irrelevant if the content is html encoded or if it is enclosed in CDATA. Another solution is described in the answer below - but the links you provided were very helpfull. – Daniel Martens Jun 12 '15 at 10:41

How do I include a CDATA section in a WCF client webservice call in .Net?

2 Answers2

Linked