XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Question

when i am trying to open a page in sharepoint the above error is appearing. actually i used the following code :

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
    Response.Write(GenerateTagCloud());
    Response.End();       
}

private string GenerateTagCloud()
{
    SPWeb myweb = null;
    SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
    {
        SPSite mysite1 = new SPSite(mysite.ID);
        myweb = mysite1.OpenWeb();
    });

    myweb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

    SPList categories = myweb.Lists["Discussion Categories"];
    SPList discussion = myweb.Lists["Team Discussion"];

    System.Text.StringBuilder sp = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
    //System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

    sp.Append("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>");
    sp.Append("<tags>");

    foreach (SPListItem category in categories.Items)
    {            
        string categoryname = category.Name;
        categoryname = categoryname.Replace(" ", "%20");
        sp.Append("<a href='" + myweb.Url + "/Pages/Home.aspx?Discussion=" + categoryname + "' style='font-size: 13.5pt'  color='0x7b7b7b'>" + category.Name + "</a>");
    }
    sp.Append("</tags>");

    myweb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
    return sp.ToString();

}

but in the output it shows as : tag opening and closing of the tags node in &lt and &gt . how to correct this?

sp.Append("); is there in the above code. it doesn't showing in the above code — Abhimanyu, Nov 24 '10 at 13:25
What are you category names like? Are they valid XML? What is `sp` and how is it declared? — Oded, Nov 24 '10 at 13:27
category names are valid. sp is a stringbuilder object. and in the pageload i wrote response.write(sp);response.end(); — Abhimanyu, Nov 24 '10 at 13:30
before starting of the , shall i add to that stringbuilder object, so that it may work? — Abhimanyu, Nov 24 '10 at 13:32
@Oded actually i found the error. one of the category name is having like a & b, the special character & is casuing the error. so how to rectify it? — Abhimanyu, Nov 24 '10 at 14:00

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Since the issue is with a & in one of the category names, all you need to do is escape it - there are five characters that need to be escaped in XML:

& - &
< - <
- >
" - "
' - '

In the case of &, simply replace it with &.

Having said that, if you are writing XML you should be using an XmlWriter and not a StringBuilder - this will escape the characters correctly and this kind of error will not occur:

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(Console.Out);
writer.WriteStartElement("Foo");
writer.WriteAttributeString("Bar", "Some & value");
writer.WriteElementString("Nested", "data & data");
writer.WriteEndElement();

Code taken from here.

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

1 Answers1