Format XML output from .NET Service

**mtdave** · Sep 6 '06, 03:00 PM

I am new to creating .NET Services. I have created a service that does a database query and produces an XML file in OPML format. The service is being called call from a DHTML web page using XMLHttp. Everything is working great except for the service is html encoding my "<" and ">" characters to "<" and ">". For my XML output I need these characters to remain what they are. How do I tell the service not to perform the html encoding? I was wondering if this was in the Globalization setting in web.config? responseEncodin g is currently set to utf-8.

I am using Visual Studio 2003 with .Net 1.1.

OPML example

Code:

<opml version="1.0">
<head>
</head>
<body>
  <outline text="fruit">
    <outline text="orange"/>
    <outline text="apple">
      <outline text="red delicious"/>
      <outline text="braeburn"/>
    </outline>
  </outline>
</body>
</opml>

I need my XML output to look like the above example. All my "<" and ">" symbols are getting html encoded.

Web service:

Code:

[WebMethod]
public string EntityTable()
{
	try
	{
		StringBuilder xmlString = new StringBuilder();
		//Add a bunch of XML text to string here
		return xmlString.ToString();
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		return ex.ToString();
	}
}

.NET is also adding this before and after the OPML:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
  <string xmlns="http://localhost/webservices/">
  </string>

I need the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> bit but I dont need the <string> tags. Is this a key to my problem?

Any help appreciated. Thanks