Displaying an XML code in the browser

Question

This may be simple, although i'm having some trouble finding a solution.

When you look a .xml file in your folder, you could double click it so your main browser will display the code content of it.

I have the complete path of the xml, and I'd like to create a link in aspx (with either c# or vb.net) that redirects to the XML in the browser.

response.redirect("<path>")

--- update

it redirects to:

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7227/89684913.jpg

when i put my mouse over "here" there's the localhost port with / in the end (it looks for the path in the localhost)

that's why i made this question.. it has to be a different approach.

Answer 1

You could get the InnerXml from the root node and replace < with < and > with > in your page.

Something simple to start with:

Response.Write(doc.InnerXml.Replace("<", "&lt;").Replace(">", "&gt;"));

Answer 2

Once you read the contents of the file into a string, you can do something like this

<pre>
<%= myXmlString.Replace("<", "&lt;").Replace(">", "&gt;").Replace("\"", "&quot;") %>
</pre>

The "pre" tags will make the browser maintain the file's layout. Yeah, you could do something more sophisticated with regular expressions, but meh, sometimes something simple is all it takes ;-)

Answer 3

if you want to maintain the structure and whitespace of the xml document, try using the output from LINQ's XDocument. This example shows how to load from a file

public string XmlFile
{
    get
    {
        return Server.MapPath("output.xml");
    }
}

then, in your xml output method:

            string xmlFromFile = string.Empty;

            XmlTextReader reader = null;
            XDocument xmlDoc = null;

            try
            {
                reader = new XmlTextReader(XmlFile);
                xmlDoc = XDocument.Load(reader);
                reader.Close();
            }
            catch
            {
                if(reader != null)
                    reader.Close();
            }

            lblXMLoutput.Text = String.Format("<pre>{0}</pre>",
                xmlDoc.ToString().Replace("<", "&lt;").Replace(">", "&gt;"));

            this.xmlOutput.InnerHtml = xmlDoc.ToString();

and in your form have this code:

<asp:Label ID="lblXMLoutput" runat="server" />
<div id="xmlOutput" runat="server" style="display:none;"></div>

Notice that the xmlOutput div isn't necessary. It's just there so you can check to make sure all of your xml is output correctly.

Answer 4

As i said in the question, it would be easy:

Process.Start(<path>)

It worked perfectly, thank to all of you guys who have helped me!

Answer 5

 Dim xmlDoc As New XmlDocument
    xmlDoc.Load(Server.MapPath("QuinnDirectRequest.xml"))
    Response.Clear()
    Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline; filename=file.xml")

    If Request.QueryString("type") = "s" Then
        Response.ContentType = "text/xml"
        Response.Write(xmlDoc.InnerXml)
    Else
        Response.ContentType = "application/xml"
        Response.Write(xmlDoc.InnerXml)
    End If

    Response.Flush()
    Response.End()