What's the proper and reliable way to store an XML string as a JSON property?

Question

I want to store a string which itself is an XML string as a property of an JSON object , what's the reliable and proper way of dong this? Should I first encode the XML data into BASE64 first prior saving it to an JSON object, due to the fact that JSON does not support binary data?

Example of data I want to store:

{ 
"string1" : "<xml>...moderately complex XML...</xml>" 
} 

Answer 1

Actually base 64 should work. But you might want to mark the property so it is clear.

{
    "Property" : {
        "Type" : "XML",
        "Encoding" : "Base64",
        "Value" : "PFhNTD48WE1MPjxYTUw+PC9YTUw+PC9YTUw+PC9YTUw+"
    }
}

Answer 2

JSON does not support binary data?

If you mean it doesn't have a bytes datatype, well who cares? JavaScript strings can contain all possible Unicode characters, including control characters:

"string1": "\u0000\u0001\u0002..."

(Not that those are even valid in XML.)

So you can, if you really must encode bytes, just map them directly to the characters of the same ordinal number:

"xml": "<el>caf\u00C3\u00A9</el>"
// "café", encoded as a UTF-8 byte sequence read as ISO-8859-1

but really for XML you'd be better off keeping it in Unicode and just JSON-encoding it like any other string:

"xml": "<el>caf\u00E9</el>"
// or assuming your channel encoding is OK, simply
"xml": "<el>café</el>"