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xmlrestletcdata

Inserting a CDATA section into XML generated by a Restlet web service using SAX

I need to embed some HTML in some of my XML nodes and the consumer wants it inside a CDATA section. They want the CDATA to be preserved as <![CDATA[ ]]>. But the opening and closing angle brackets are being escaped so they are receiving this instead &lt;![CDATA[]]&gt;. I have tried a number of different methods but nothing seems to work. And there doesn't appear to be any functionality built into the Restlet framework. Has anyone else faced this issue and found a solution? Here's a sample of my code:

@Get
public Representation toXml() {

    // Create a new SAX representation
    SaxRepresentation result = new SaxRepresentation() {

        public void write(org.restlet.ext.xml.XmlWriter writer)
                throws IOException {
...

        try {
                // Start document
                writer.startDocument();

                // Append the root node
                writer.startElement(COMPANIES); 

      // I want to start the CDATA section here.

      writer.startElement(BRANCHES);
                if((mfgRepList != null) && (mfgRepList.size() > 0)){
                    writer = MfgRep.getMfgRepHtml(writer, mfgRepList);  
                }
                writer.endElement(BRANCHES);

      // I want to end the CDATA section here.


      writer.endElement(COMPANIES);

      writer.endDocument();
    } catch (SAXException e) {
                throw new IOException(e.getMessage());
            }
        }; // end of write

    }; // end of create new Sax representation

    return result;
}
Solution

  • After inspecting the restlet code, it looks like they "escape" all strings/characters. So, in this case, I believe the only solution is to "write" around the xml writer through the output stream:

        writer.getWriter().write("<![CDATA[");
    // insert CDATA data here
    writer.getWriter().write("]]");

    There may be other solutions, but this seemed the most straight forward in this case. I believe it is an oversight in the restlet api.