XML 1.0 Line Feed / New Line

[sde]

are new line characters compliant with XML 1.0 or should I be using a special character?

for example:

<notes>
  <item>here
is a note with
multiple lines</item>
</notes>

[DJMaze]

depends on the purpose.

Either use:
- CR+LF (windows)
- LF (linux).
- wrap all data inside <![CDATA[ DATA HERE ]]>

[teknomage1]

You are allowed to use any character that is valid in your declared encoding. The parser is supposed to be able to handle character encodings properly.

Whether you should be using a special tag depends on the semantics of the XML language you are targetting and should be defined by that standard. The xhtml xml language states that whitespace in the actual text nodes will be ignored and asks that you use 'br' tags instead. My homebrew XML frame delivery specification on the other hand uses literal unix-style newline characters in the text nodes. It all depends really.

[sde]

the problem stemmed from an ajax app which wasn't sending new lines properly. i have found that the problem isn't in the XML, but the javascript below it.

it is kind of interesting though. let's say i have a textarea named/id "foo". in the textarea, i have multiple lines.

var msg = document.getElementById('foo').value;

msg now contains the literal characters \n where there is a new line. when that gets sent into our framework, the backslash was somehow getting taken out.

i ended up replacing \n with the hex line feed character and everything was fine.

msg.replace(/\n/g,"%0A");

we don't have this problem when the text field is submitted over a POST request (in other areas of the app) and then sent through the same API over PHP.

if that doesn't make sense, we have a framework that supports the same API calls from either AJAX or PHP requests.

anyway, problem is solved. thanks for the info.

[teknomage1]

Maybe the AJAX framework expects all strings to be passed through encode() before being sent?

[sde]

after more testing this morning i found that (my previous post) was not the solution. i needed to escape the first backslash of the \n.. so replacing \n with \\n did the trick.

the guy who wrote the framework is on vacation and i don't feel like an in-depth investigation right now