SelectNodes with attribute containing apostrophe

Question

I'm trying to use SelectNodes where an attribute is containing a text with apostrophes

The attribute is oor:path and the node looks like this:

<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.Histories/Histories/org.openoffice.Office.Histories:HistoryInfo['PickList']/OrderList">

I have tried with this code (and failed)...

XmlNodeList xnList = xml.SelectNodes("/oor:items/item[contains(@oor:path, '['PickList']/OrderList')]", nsMgr);

Please Help!

// Anders

Answer 1

The ' entities are resolved into single quotes before the XPath parser can see them. Therefore, from its point of view, they cannot be distinguished from "real" single quotes.

You can delimit the argument to contains() with escaped double quotes and use single quotes in the expression:

XmlNodeList xnList = xml.SelectNodes(
    "/oor:items/item[contains(@oor:path, \"['PickList']/OrderList\")]", nsMgr);

Or, alternatively, using a verbatim string literal:

XmlNodeList xnList = xml.SelectNodes(
    @"/oor:items/item[contains(@oor:path, ""['PickList']/OrderList"")]", nsMgr);