How to determine if XML has unclosed strings

Question

I have many XML files and some of them might have unclosed strings like this

<ns0:Info InfoTyp="53" InfoID="/>

Those unclosed strings dont always appear as the last part of the tag

Is there a way in Notepad++ or in C# to easily detect when a file has this kind of strings ?

How can I also detect other kind of error in the XML file that make it an invalid XML ? I need to try to parse it to detect this ?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 24 '13 at 16:13

With C# you can try to load xml file into XDocument (or XmlDocument):

using System.Xml.Linq; // include this in your using directives

try
{
    var xdoc = XDocument.Load(path_to_xml);
}
catch (XmlException e)
{
    // xml is invalid     
}

XmlException contains information about line number and position which caused error. Also exception message is pretty informative. E.g. for you xml it will say:

Unexpected end of file has occurred. The following elements are not closed: Line 1, position 35.

Anirudha · Answer 2 · 2013-09-24T16:13:17.977

0

In c#

try
{
    XDocument doc=XDocument.Load(path);
}
catch(XmlException ex)
{
    //oops xml not formatted properly
}

In Notepad++

Check RegularExpression option

Find What: \A([^"]*"[^"]*"[^"]*)*\z

If it matches you have a valid xml

edited Sep 24 '13 at 16:13

answered Sep 24 '13 at 16:03

Anirudha

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Thanks...but the notepad regular expression needs to detect the INVALID ones – Mauricio Gracia Gutierrez Sep 24 '13 at 16:08
So I run the "Search in files" option and the list of results is the opposite of what I need ? – Mauricio Gracia Gutierrez Sep 24 '13 at 16:23
@MauricioGracia the regex would work for odd cases..not even..so don't use it – Anirudha Sep 24 '13 at 16:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

0

You can validate against an XSD schema to ensure an XML document is well formed and conforms to a specific structure.

This is a good post to get you started if using .NET...

https://stackoverflow.com/a/2553468/1246574

edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Community

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answered Sep 24 '13 at 16:03

Jim

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You can generate one easily enough, even using Visual Studio, or an XML editor like Oxygen. – Jim Sep 24 '13 at 16:05
1

Validation is different than checking if a document is well-formed. Unclosed strings would indicate a document that wasn't well-formed and should even be allowed to be validated. – James Cronen Sep 24 '13 at 16:21

How to determine if XML has unclosed strings

3 Answers3