I use ASP.net to generate a sitemap.xml, get Googl

Question

I am trying to return an generated .xml file, but google picks it up as a html page. So I get: "Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead."

Here is the ASP.net Controller that generate the sitemap.xml

[Route("sitemap.xml")]
public async Task<IActionResult> SitemapXmlAsync()
{

  using (var client = new HttpClient())
  {
    try
    {
      client.BaseAddress = new Uri("https://api.badgag.com/api/generateSitemap");
      var response = await client.GetAsync("");
      response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

      var stringResult = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
      var pages = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<String[]>(stringResult);

      String xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>";
      xml += "<sitemapindex xmlns=\"http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9\">";

      foreach (string s in pages)
      {

        xml += "<sitemap>";
        xml += "<loc>" + s + "</loc>";
        //xml += "<lastmod>" + DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd") + "</lastmod>";
        xml += "</sitemap>";
      }

      xml += "</sitemapindex>";

      return Content(xml, "text/xml");

    }
    catch (HttpRequestException httpRequestException)
    {
      return BadRequest($"Error getting sitemap: {httpRequestException.Message}");
    }
  }

}

I assume I am missing something. Setting a different header?

You can see the result here:

https://badgag.com/sitemap.xml

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

I found this article about creating a XML sitemap with ASP.Net, this helped me to create a sitemap.ashx file with the correct sitemap layout Google and Bing require.

It basically is using XmlTextWriter to generate the required tags for a sitemap. This example is using HTTPContext to write an XML file. Here is the code from this site:

using System;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using System.Xml;

namespace Mikesdotnetting
{

    public class Sitemap : IHttpHandler
    {

        public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) {
            context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
            using (XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(context.Response.OutputStream, Encoding.UTF8)) {
                writer.WriteStartDocument();
                writer.WriteStartElement("urlset");
                writer.WriteAttributeString("xmlns", "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9");
                writer.WriteStartElement("url");

                string connect = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnString"].ConnectionString;
                string url = "http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/";
                using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connect)) {
                    using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("GetSiteMapContent", conn)) {
                        cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
                        conn.Open();
                        using (SqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader()) {
                            // Get the date of the most recent article
                            rdr.Read();
                            writer.WriteElementString("loc", string.Format("{0}Default.aspx", url));
                            writer.WriteElementString("lastmod", string.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd}", rdr[0]));
                            writer.WriteElementString("changefreq", "weekly");
                            writer.WriteElementString("priority", "1.0");
                            writer.WriteEndElement();
                            // Move to the Article IDs
                            rdr.NextResult();
                            while (rdr.Read()) {
                                writer.WriteStartElement("url");
                                writer.WriteElementString("loc", string.Format("{0}Article.aspx?ArticleID={1}", url,  rdr[0]));

                                if (rdr[1] != DBNull.Value)
                                writer.WriteElementString("lastmod", string.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd}", rdr[1]));
                                writer.WriteElementString("changefreq", "monthly");
                                writer.WriteElementString("priority", "0.5");
                                writer.WriteEndElement();
                            }
                            // Move to the Article Type IDs
                            rdr.NextResult();
                            while (rdr.Read()) {
                            writer.WriteStartElement("url");
                            writer.WriteElementString("loc", string.Format("{0}ArticleTypes.aspx?Type={1}", url, rdr[0]));
                            writer.WriteElementString("priority", "0.5");
                            writer.WriteEndElement();
                            }
                            // Finally move to the Category IDs
                            rdr.NextResult();
                            while (rdr.Read()) {
                                writer.WriteStartElement("url");
                                writer.WriteElementString("loc", string.Format("{0}Category.aspx?Category={1}", url, rdr[0]));
                                writer.WriteElementString("priority", "0.5");
                                writer.WriteEndElement();
                            }
                            writer.WriteEndElement();
                            writer.WriteEndDocument();
                            writer.Flush();
                        }
                        context.Response.End();
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        public bool IsReusable {
            get {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Try xml linq :

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        const string URL = @"https://badgag.com/sitemap.xml";
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(URL);
            XNamespace ns = doc.Root.GetDefaultNamespace();

            string[] locations = doc.Descendants(ns + "loc").Select(x => (string)x).ToArray();
        }
    }
}