ASP.Net menu databinding encoding problem

Question

Hi,

I have a menu where I bind data through:

XmlDataSource xmlData = new XmlDataSource();
        xmlData.DataFile = String.Format(@"{0}{1}\Navigation.xml", getXmlPath(), getLanguage());
        xmlData.XPath = @"/Items/Item";
        TopNavigation.DataSource = xmlData;
        TopNavigation.DataBind();

The problem is when my xml has special characters, since I use a lot of french words.

As an alternative I tried using a stream instead and using encoding to get the special characters, with the following code:

StreamReader strm = new StreamReader(String.Format(@"{0}{1}\Navigation.xml", getXmlPath(), getLanguage()), Encoding.GetEncoding(1254));
            XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
            xDoc.Load(strm);

            XmlDataSource xmlData = new XmlDataSource();
            xmlData.ID = "TopNav";
            xmlData.Data = xDoc.InnerXml;
            xmlData.XPath = @"/Items/Item";
            TopNavigation.Items.Clear();
            TopNavigation.DataSource = xmlData;
            TopNavigation.DataBind();

The problem I'm having now is that my data doesn't refresh when I change the path where the stream gets read.

When I skip through the code it does, but not on my page.

So the thing is either, how do I get the data te be refreshed? Or (which is actually preferred) how do I get the encoding right in the first piece of code?

Help is highly apreciated!

EDIT:

I tried the CDATA solution, however i'm working with attributes so it's not possible to specify an element in an attribute, my xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Items Text="">
  <Item Text="Actualités>"/>
  <Item Text="Matériau">
    <Item Text="Arsenal"/>
    <Item Text="Vêtements"/>
  </Item>
  <Item Text="Links"/>
</Items>

Any other ideas?

Answer 1

Try to wrap french words with <![CDATA[....]]> tag

In this case XML will not parse your special characters

Answer 2

I solved my problem.

I changed the encoding of my xml file in notepad++ to UTF8 instead of ANSI (default), and it solved the problem.

Thanks for replies anyway