FTP get xml file and convert to XmlDocument

Jeffrey van Dijk

FtpWebRequest fwr = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("ftp://**********/httpdocs/App/" + MainWindow.admRelatie + "/" + filename);
fwr.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(Username, Password);
fwr.UseBinary = true;
fwr.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.DownloadFile;
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)fwr.GetResponse();
Stream s = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(s);
string x = reader.ReadToEnd();
MessageBox.Show(x);
XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.Load(s);

That is the code I am currently using to get the file from the FTP but I am always getting an error saying illegal characters, if I then debug the xml string, I see there is still \n\r and a lot of spaces everywhere in the XML. I at first thought it was the encoding but even if I explicitly say its UTF-8 it still doesn't work, if I then do use the reader.Readline(); instead of read to end and just store every line in a List then it gets rid of the '\n\r' but it still has a lot of empty spaces in the xml which causes the illegal character problem.

Then ofcourse I could get rid of the empty spaces by doing str.Replace(" ", ""); but then the problem is that some of values inside the xml also have spaces I do not want to get rid of.

I woud love some help :)

3 Replies

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Nilesh Shah9y ago
Accepted answer
Hi Jeffrey,

Which line exactly gives you error "illegal characters"? Always post specific error with error number which you get from Visual Studio or debugger.

I suspect the error is in following line because you want to show whole xml file in a messagebox:
MessageBox.Show(x);
And you can also save file using byte array instead of reading as a string:
FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream);

using (FileStream writer = new FileStream(LocalDestinationPath, FileMode.Create))
{

    long length = response.ContentLength;
    int bufferSize = 2048;
    int readCount;
    byte[] buffer = new byte[2048];

    readCount = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);
    while (readCount > 0)
    {
        writer.Write(buffer, 0, readCount);
        readCount = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);
    }
}

reader.Close();
response.Close();
Test above code and see what happens
Jeffrey van Dijk9y ago
I honestly thought about doing it the same way but didn't think it would make a difference but it works like a charm, I simply put the string in a file, save the file on the harddisk then read that file and convert it to XmlDocument.

Thanks for the help :)
Nitin Sontakke9y ago
Should .UseBinary be false as you are getting string data. Not it should matter or resolve the issue.

Can you not put some real dummy xml file and share that here too?

Have you tried writing it to the disk and reading it again?