Webservice parameter value encoding

Question

We have a webservice created in WCF and presenting itself as a basicHttpBinding. One of the parameters is a string which takes an xml string. Looking at the soap the client generates to send to the webservice, the xml is encoded, with all < and > swapped into &lt; and &gt;. My question is, is this all that is encoded, or has the parameter been run through HtmlEncode so that other entities would be swapped also?

The reason I ask is we are submitting with our client to a 3rd party webservice now and they would like to know the details on what is encoded.

Answer 1

It is not HMTMEncoded.

But to make it a valid string in XML the following characters must be escaped:

 &  =>  & 
 <   =>  &amp;lt;
 >   =>  &amp;gt; 
 "  =>  &amp;quot;
 '  =>  &amp;apos;

", ' and & must not neccessarily be escaped (however they should be), as their meaning depends on their use inside the xml string.

See the spec for the exact rules.