Convert selection XML to text (<> => &lt;&&gt;) about xmltools HOT 5 OPEN

Btw, is this really correct?

When i want to convert text to XML i need to use Convert selection XML to text and not Convert selection text to XML. The (<> => &lt;&&gt;) seems to be correct, though.

from xmltools.

I tried with v. 3.0.4.3 and it works for me with &amp, though I would expect a slightly different behavior

Expected behaviour:

Function to de-/encode special chars within selected tags (which are not marked as CDATA):

chars are replaced with ' " & < > and vice versa

It also encodes tags though if selected, so I would expect it to encode only the content of a tag
(Use Case: Usually I would like to select whole parts of a file and then "encode" content of all non-cdata tags)

from xmltools.

The de/encode is a simple text replacement algo. It has no notion of XML itself other than that it has to replace certain texts.

Lets explore the use cases:

Use case 1:
I have text, which I need to insert into XML.. however it might have illegal/reserved characters that will mess up the XML format. Hence, I select the text that I inserted and run 'Convert selection XML to text'... now my text is valid XML text.

Use case 2: I have some text node in XML that is encoded. Without using a full XML parser, I select this text and then run 'Convert selection text to XML. Now my selection is regular text and I can copy/paste it somewhere.

Use case 3:
I copy/pasted some & encoded text which was part of a cookie/URL-query/etc and want to decode it to XML. I select all and run 'Convert selection text to XML'. I will now have an XML document that I can work with.

Neither of these use cases require CDATA knowledge. Can you maybe describe your use case in detail?

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As described in a Python article dedicated to XML escaping [1], there are two separate cases to consider when escaping: CDATA and attributes. In the former case, there's no need to handle quotes; in the latter, quotes should be treated.

It seems logical to have dedicated functions here for the two cases; or maybe be smart to check the context (but then it would be not very flexible for cases where context in not clear, as in a temporary file without proper XML structure used for intermediate work). Currently (in version 3.0.4.3) the function Escape characters in selection (<> → &lt;&gt;) escapes everything including quotes in all positions.

[1] https://wiki.python.org/moin/EscapingXml

from xmltools.

For information, the xmltools options dialog let you choose which character must be handled by text/xml conversion functions:

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