Web Services returns string: which is XML and the angle brackets are encoded?

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DotNetGruven - 28 Jun 2004 23:01 GMT

We have a web service that returns a string which happens to be well formed
XML. The client sees the string ok, except the angle brackets are HTML
encoded ( &gt and &lt ).

Is this expected behavior? Is there a way to configure it so that it
doesn't do this?

Currently, the client is being required to use HTML.decode() to fix it, but
they would rather not?

Any insight is appreciated (in advance)

Thanks,
geo

(I posted this question earlier, but it seems to have disappeared into the
ether - sorry if it is a repost)

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Tomas Restrepo \(MVP\) - 29 Jun 2004 11:56 GMT

> We have a web service that returns a string which happens to be well formed
> XML. The client sees the string ok, except the angle brackets are HTML
> encoded ( &gt and &lt ).
>
> Is this expected behavior?

Yes. You told the framework you wanted a string, not XML. The framework had
no way to know your string contained well formed XML, so it's only option is
to encode it to ensure it doesn't generate an invalid SOAP message.

>Is there a way to configure it so that it
> doesn't do this?

Sure. Don't use a String. Use an XmlDocument or XmlNode as the type in the
WebMethod declaration.

Signature

Tomas Restrepo
tomasr@mvps.org

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DotNetGruven - 29 Jun 2004 15:52 GMT

Thanks Tomas!

Made your recommended change from a return type of String to XmlDocument and
not only are the angle brackets back, but the output is very nicely
formatted.

Thanks again,
George

> > We have a web service that returns a string which happens to be well
> formed
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Sure. Don't use a String. Use an XmlDocument or XmlNode as the type in the
> WebMethod declaration.

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Web Services returns string: which is XML and the angle brackets are encoded?

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