I use XSL to transform a XML document into HTML in .NET.
One of the nodes in the XML has a URL that should be output as the href parameter of the a HTML tag of the HTML. When the input URL has an ampersand character (e.g. http://servers/path?par1=val1&par2=val2) the ampersand appears in the output HTML as &.
Is there any way to solve this issue? Is disable-output-escaping the solution? Would not that create a whole bunch of other problems?
Here's a code sample that reproduces the issue and its output:
Output:
<html>
<body>
<a href="http://servers/path?par1=val1&amp;par2=val2#section1" />
</body>
</html>
C# Code:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Xsl;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
XmlDocument xmlDoc = ComposeXml();
XmlDocument styleSheet = new XmlDocument();
styleSheet.LoadXml(XslStyleSheet);
XmlTextWriter myWriter = new XmlTextWriter(Console.Out);
myWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
XslCompiledTransform myXslTrans = new XslCompiledTransform();
myXslTrans.Load(styleSheet);
myXslTrans.Transform(xmlDoc, null, myWriter);
Console.ReadKey();
}
private const string XslStyleSheet =
@"<xsl:stylesheet version=""1.0""
xmlns:xsl=""http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"">
<xsl:template match=""/"">
<html>
<body>
<a>
<xsl:attribute name=""href"">
<xsl:value-of select=""root/url"" />
</xsl:attribute>
</a>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>";
static private XmlDocument ComposeXml()
{
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement rootNode = doc.CreateElement("root");
doc.AppendChild(rootNode);
XmlElement urlNode = doc.CreateElement("url");
urlNode.InnerText = "http://servers/path?par1=val1&par2=val2#section1";
rootNode.AppendChild(urlNode);
return doc;
}
}
}