Smooks - XML-XML transformation removes the character escaping in the output XML

I am performing an XML-XML transformation using Smooks with the help of the freemarker configuration template.

However, when my input XML has escaped characters like

<Retail>H&amp;M</Retail>

the transformed output XML will only have

<Retail>H&M</Retail>

The escaping is removed, which makes the output XML invalid.

How can i resolve this?

This is my freemarker template

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<smooks-resource-list xmlns="http://www.milyn.org/xsd/smooks-1.1.xsd"
xmlns:ftl="http://www.milyn.org/xsd/smooks/freemarker-1.1.xsd">
<params>
    <param name="stream.filter.type">SAX</param>
    <param name="default.serialization.on">false</param>
</params>
<resource-config
    selector="combinedResponse">
    <resource>org.milyn.delivery.DomModelCreator</resource>
</resource-config>
<ftl:freemarker applyOnElement="combinedResponse">
    <ftl:template><!--
<BODY>
   <Retail>${combinedResponse.Retail}</Retail>
</BODY>
-->
    </ftl:template>
</ftl:freemarker>

Solution

See Freemarker's auto-escaping, you can override it by adding the following header:

<#ftl output_format="XML">

the output format of a template can be enforced in the the ftl header

If it's not working try to add

<#ftl output_format="XML" auto_esc=true>

If escaping doesn't happen after adding the above ftl header, then <#ftl output_format="XML" auto_esc=true> might helps (and that means that FreeMarker was configured to use "disable" auto-escaping policy, which is generally not recommended).