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Handling Invalid Characters in XML while Parsing with C# XmlReader

πŸ‘€ Views: 55 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-06-09
xml c# xmlreader C#

I just started working with I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. This might be a silly question, but I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I'm having trouble parsing an XML file using `XmlReader` in C#. The XML file occasionally contains invalid characters, such as control characters that are not allowed in XML 1.0. When I attempt to read the file, I get an `XmlException` stating `'The '...' character, hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character`. I've tried to sanitize the XML before parsing, but it doesn't seem to help. Here’s a snippet of my parsing code: ```csharp using System.Xml; string filePath = "path/to/xml/file.xml"; using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(filePath)) { while (reader.Read()) { // Process the XML content } } ``` To handle this, I attempted to read the file into a string and replace invalid characters using a regex before passing it to the `XmlReader`, but I'm running into issues with performance as the file size increases. Here’s the replacement code I tried: ```csharp string xmlContent = File.ReadAllText(filePath); string sanitizedContent = Regex.Replace(xmlContent, "[\x00-\x1F]", ""); using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(sanitizedContent))) { while (reader.Read()) { // Process the sanitized XML } } ``` The behavior still continues in some cases. How can I effectively handle or skip these invalid characters while ensuring I don't lose necessary data? Any best practices or alternative approaches would be appreciated. Is there a better approach? For context: I'm using C# on macOS. This is part of a larger service I'm building. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. How would you solve this? Cheers for any assistance! I'm working in a Ubuntu 20.04 environment. Any ideas what could be causing this?