> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:45:22 +0100
> From: Robert Sanderson <[log in to unmask]>
>
>>> I've got a gateway to a Z39.50 server which returns characters
>>> which I can't serialize to XML and/or successfully deserialize,
>>> for example the [...]
>>
>> How can there be a character that you can't at least serialize as a
>> hex code?
>
> I can serialize it fine, but when it gets deserialised, the
> underlying xml parser turns it back into the escape character
> proper.  Then it screws up the SOAP response parser when it's at the
> end of a string.

Nooo ...  That makes no sense

>     <term>
>       <value>foo &#27;</value>
>     </term>

So your SOAP toolkit translates this into a DOM element or equivalent
containing a lump of opaque data five characters long: "f", "o", "o",
space and escape.  Good; then what?  Nothing else re-parses that
opaque data, does it?  You either just turna round and submit it as a
search term (in which case you re-XML-encode it, just as you would if
the user provided a search-term that had "<" in it), or you display it
to the user, in which case it's your GUI toolkit's problem what to do
with it.

This seems like a classic example of the kind of problem to which the
solution is just to Do The Right Thing.

What am I missing?

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <[log in to unmask]>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Why should I care about posterity?  What's posterity ever
         done for me?" -- Groucho Marx.

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