.NET Force :: Reading data from CData Section in XML

In this article we will see the way to read the data from CData section of an XML file. The CData sections are used to quote or escape blocks of text to keep that text from being interpreted as markup language.

To get the data from CData we should use XmlCDataSection class in the System.Xml Namespace the below code will get the image stored in binary format in XML CData Section and display the image.

string strPath = Server.MapPath(".") + @"\Sports.xml";
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(strPath);
XmlElement root = doc.DocumentElement;
XmlNode node = doc.DocumentElement.SelectSingleNode(
@"/Contents/Content/Picture");
XmlNode childNode = node.ChildNodes[0];
if (childNode is XmlCDataSection)
{
XmlCDataSection cdataSection = childNode as XmlCDataSection;
Response.BinaryWrite(Convert.FromBase64String(cdataSection.Value));
}

The XML file structure looks like the one shown below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Contents>
<Content>
<Title>Major League Baseball</Title>
<Picture><![CDATA[/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/2wBDAAgGBgcGBQgHBwcJCQgKDBQNDAsLDBkSEw8UHRof
Hh0aHBwgJC4nICIsIxwcKDcpLDAxNDQ0Hyc5PTgyPC4zNDL/2wBDAQkJCQwLDBgNDRgyIRwh
MjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjIyMjL/wAAR]]></Picture>
</Content>
</Contents>