How to output numerical entity encodings with the XslTransform class?

[Tim Meagher]

I am using the XslTransform class in C#.net to output XML files that include
non-ascii Unicode characters such as the Greek capital letter theta U+0398.
I can easily outout the data as serialized UTF-8 by using the default
encoding of UTF-8; however, my customer wants any non-ascii characters
output as numerically-entity encoded characters, e.g. Θ (where 920 is
the decimal equivalent for hexadecimal 398). If I use the Saxon processor
or MSXSL, and the xsl transform has the output type set to us-ascii as
follows:

<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="us-ascii" indent="no" />

then all non-ascii characters are automatically output as numerically-entity
encoded characters. However, if I use the XsltTransform class outputting to
a streamwriter with an encoding type of ASCII, then no entity encoding takes
place - in fact the character is replaced with a question mark. Can anyone
tell me how to configure the properties of the transform to output
numerically-entity encoded characters for all non-ascii characters?

Thank you,

Tim

[Oleg Tkachenko [MVP]]

Tim Meagher wrote:

I am using the XslTransform class in C#.net to output XML files that include
non-ascii Unicode characters such as the Greek capital letter theta U+0398.
I can easily outout the data as serialized UTF-8 by using the default
encoding of UTF-8; however, my customer wants any non-ascii characters
output as numerically-entity encoded characters, e.g. Θ (where 920 is
the decimal equivalent for hexadecimal 398).

XslTransform doesn't support that. Here is one of possible solutions:
http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000266.html

--
Oleg Tkachenko [XML MVP]
http://blog.tkachenko.com

[Tim Meagher]

Oleg,

Thanks for the tip. I used it as a basis for overriding the
StreamWriter write method to accomplish the same thing. Here's what I
ended up with:

public sealed class ASCIIStreamWriter : StreamWriter
{
//Constructors - add more as needed
public ASCIIStreamWriter(string url, bool append, Encoding encoding) :
base(url, append, encoding) {}

public override void Write(string text)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(text.Length);
foreach (char c in text)
{
if (c > 0x0080)
{
sb.Append("&#");
sb.Append((int)c);
sb.Append(';');
}
else
{
sb.Append(c);
}
}
base.Write(sb.ToString());
}
}

Regards,

Tim


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