XmlCDataSection Class

Introduction
Inheritance Hierarchy
Syntax
Constructors
Properties
Methods
Remarks
Example
Requirements

Introduction

Represents a <![CDATA[...]]> section in the XML document.

CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text that contain characters that would otherwise be recognized as markup. The content inside a CDATA section is treated as raw character data, not as markup. This is particularly useful when dealing with XML documents that contain large amounts of text with characters like <, >, and &, which have special meaning in XML.

Inheritance Hierarchy

System.Object
    System.Xml.XmlNode
        System.Xml.XmlCharacterData
            System.Xml.XmlCDataSection

Syntax

public sealed class XmlCDataSection : System.Xml.XmlCharacterData

Constructors

The XmlCDataSection class does not expose any public constructors. Instances of this class are created by the XmlDocument class when you call methods such as CreateCDataSection.

Properties

Name	Description
Name	Gets the qualified name of the node. For XmlCDataSection, this is specifically `#cdata-section`.
NodeType	Gets the type of the current node. Returns XmlNodeType.CDATA.
Value	Gets or sets the text content of the CDATA section.
Data	Gets or sets the text of this node. This property inherits from XmlCharacterData.

Methods

Name	Description
CloneNode	Creates a duplicate of this node.
WriteTo	Saves all the children of the node to the specified XmlWriter.
InnerText	Gets or sets the concatenated values of all the child nodes of this node.

Remarks

The XmlCDataSection class is part of the System.Xml namespace, which provides classes for working with XML documents.

When parsing XML, the XmlDocument class automatically handles CDATA sections. If you need to programmatically create a CDATA section, use the XmlDocument.CreateCDataSection method.

The content within a CDATA section should not contain the string ]]>, as this marks the end of the CDATA section.

Example

The following example demonstrates how to create an XmlCDataSection and add it to an XML document.

C# Example

                    using System;

                    using System.Xml;

                    public class CDataExample

                    {

                        public static void Main(string[] args)

                        {

                            // Create a new XML document

                            XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

                            // Create an element

                            XmlElement element = doc.CreateElement("description");

                            // Create a CDATA section

                            XmlCDataSection cdata = doc.CreateCDataSection("This is some text containing < and > symbols. & needs escaping!");

                            // Append the CDATA section to the element

                            element.AppendChild(cdata);

                            // Append the element to the document

                            doc.AppendChild(element);

                            // Save the XML document

                            using System.IO.StringWriter sw = new System.IO.StringWriter();

                            XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sw, new XmlWriterSettings{ Indent= true });

                            doc.Save(writer);

                            // Output the XML

                            Console.WriteLine(sw.ToString());

                        }

                    }

Output:

                    <?xml version="1.0"?>

                    <description>

                        <![CDATA[This is some text containing < and > symbols. & needs escaping!]]>

                    </description>

Requirements

Namespace: System.Xml

Assembly: System.Xml.dll

.NET Framework Versions: Available in the following versions: 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8.

.NET Framework