While using the Rss20FeedFormatter class in a WCF project, I was trying to wrap the content of my description elements with a <![CDATA[ ]]>
section. I found that no matter what I did, the HTML content of the description elements was always encoded and the CDATA section was never added. After peering into the source code of Rss20FeedFormatter, I found that when building the Summary node, it basically creates a new TextSyndicationContent instance which wipes out whatever settings were previously specified (I think).
My Code
public class CDataSyndicationContent : TextSyndicationContent
{
public CDataSyndicationContent(TextSyndicationContent content)
: base(content)
{
}
protected override void WriteContentsTo(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer)
{
writer.WriteCData(Text);
}
}
... (The following code should wrap the Summary with a CDATA section)
SyndicationItem item = new SyndicationItem();
item.Title = new TextSyndicationContent(name);
item.Summary = new CDataSyndicationContent(
new TextSyndicationContent(
"<div>This is a test</div>",
TextSyndicationContentKind.Html));
Rss20FeedFormatter Code (AFAIK, the above code does not work because of this logic)
...
else if (reader.IsStartElement("description", ""))
result.Summary = new TextSyndicationContent(reader.ReadElementString());
...
As a workaround, I've resorted to using the RSS20FeedFormatter to build the RSS, and then patch the RSS manually. For example:
StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(new StringWriter(buffer));
feedFormatter.WriteTo(writer ); // feedFormatter = RSS20FeedFormatter
PostProcessOutputBuffer(buffer);
WebOperationContext.Current.OutgoingResponse.ContentType =
"application/xml; charset=utf-8";
return new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(buffer.ToString()));
...
public void PostProcessOutputBuffer(StringBuilder buffer)
{
var xmlDoc = XDocument.Parse(buffer.ToString());
foreach (var element in xmlDoc.Descendants("channel").First()
.Descendants("item")
.Descendants("description"))
{
VerifyCdataHtmlEncoding(buffer, element);
}
foreach (var element in xmlDoc.Descendants("channel").First()
.Descendants("description"))
{
VerifyCdataHtmlEncoding(buffer, element);
}
buffer.Replace(" xmlns:a10=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom\"",
" xmlns:atom=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom\"");
buffer.Replace("a10:", "atom:");
}
private static void VerifyCdataHtmlEncoding(StringBuilder buffer,
XElement element)
{
if (!element.Value.Contains("<") || !element.Value.Contains(">"))
{
return;
}
var cdataValue = string.Format("<{0}><![CDATA[{1}]]></{2}>",
element.Name,
element.Value,
element.Name);
buffer.Replace(element.ToString(), cdataValue);
}
The idea for this workaround came from the following location, I just adapted it to work with WCF instead of MVC. http://localhost:8732/Design_Time_Addresses/SyndicationServiceLibrary1/Feed1/
I'm just wondering if this is simply a bug in Rss20FeedFormatter or is it by design? Also, if anyone has a better solution, I'd love to hear it!