Request.InputStream XML encoding

Question

User-1677473226 posted

I have an ASP.NET app that accepts an XML document via HTTP using Request.InputStream. The XML doc is UTF-8 encoded (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>) and contains some special unicode characters (i.e. non-English letters which contain accent marks, etc.). I am reading the Request.InputStream into a DataSet using ReadXml().

Stream xmlFile = Request.InputStream;

DataSet ds = new DataSet();

ds.ReadXml(xmlFile);

The stream is accepted fine, but once it tries to read it into the DataSet, I get an error: "There is an invalid character in the given encoding..."  If the original XML file's encoding is changed to <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> then it works without error. This is confusing to begin with because I thought that the UTF-8 charset covered all the characters in ISO-8859-1. Is that incorrect?

Since I don't have any control over how the original XML doc is encoded (it must remain UTF-8), I have been trying to find a way to set the encoding at runtime. I have tried setting Request.ContentEncoding to both UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1, both in the Page_Load() and in the Application_BeginRequest() handlers. Also tried setting the <globalization> settings in Web.Config both ways - nothing has worked. I also tried reading the XML file into an XmlDocument object instead of a DataSet, but got the same error.

I'd like to keep it in a DataSet if at all possible because it's much easier for the data manipulation that I have to do later on in the program. Is there any way to avoid the error without changing the original InputStream?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

User1917328653 posted

Hello ,I want to know how is your problem going .What I know is that the error occoured when parsing the XML stream but not XML to DataSet transformatting. A XML document must encoded as the same  charset as what is set in the XML declaretion ,otherwise error will occour.I think there must some error in the data source . Would please tell me how you reslove your problem if not chaning the original InputStream,^_^

Regards.

Answer 2

User-1677473226 posted
Thanks for your interest in this problem. I am currently waiting on the vendor who creates the XML file to find out if they are formatting it properly or if they can change the encoding in the original XML so it will work. I'll post here if I ever get this resolved.