Wix: Set semicolon to CustomActionData

Question

I have a problem with setting data that contains semicolons to CustomActionData property. By default CustomActionData class uses semicolon as DataSeparator and it breaks my data, when it contains semicolons. Is there any way to put semicolons to CustomActionData except of replacing them by come keyword?

Answer 1

to pass a semicolon in your CustomActionData you should add one more semicolon.

Example:

CustomActionData="key1=value1;key2=value2.1;;value2.2;;value2.3" - this will pass key1=value1 and key2=value2.1;value2.2;value2.3

If you don't know where the semicolons are then I guess you can create method that escapes them by replacing each semicolon with two semicolon.

If there are more symbols that you don't know how to escape you easily find out creating a simple app that creates a CustomActionData instance, adds a key-value pair and outputs the CustomActionData string representation using ToString().

Example:

CustomActionData data = new CustomActionData();
data.Add("key1", "value1");
data.Add("key2", "value2.1;value2.2;value2.3");

Console.WriteLine(data.ToString());

I hope the information is helpful.