[xml] Escape double quote character in XML

Is there an escape character for a double quote in xml? I want to write a tag like:

<parameter name="Quote = " ">

but if I put ", then that means string has ended. I need something like this (c++):

printf("Quote = \" ");

Is there a character to write before the double quote to escape it?

If you just need to try something out quickly, here's a quick and dirty solution. Use single quotes for the attribute value:

<parameter name='Quote = " '>

You can try using the a backslash followed by a "u" and then the unicode value for the character, for example the unicode value of the double quote is

" -> U+0022

Therefore if you were setting it as part of text in XML in android it would look something like this,

<TextView
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="match_parent"
     android:text=" \u0022 Showing double quotes \u0022 "/>

This would produce a text in the TextView roughly something like this

" Showing double quotes "

You can find unicode of most symbols and characters here www.unicode-table.com/en

No there isn't an escape character as such, instead you can use " or even <![CDATA["]]> to represent the " character.

Here are the common characters which need to be escaped in XML, starting with double quotes:

1. double quotes (") are escaped to "
2. ampersand (&) is escaped to &
3. single quotes (') are escaped to '
4. less than (<) is escaped to <
5. greater than (>) is escaped to >

Others have answered in terms of how to handle the specific escaping in this case.

A broader answer is not to try to do it yourself. Use an XML API - there are plenty available for just about every modern programming platform in existence.

XML APIs will handle things like this for you automatically, making it a lot harder to go wrong. Unless you're writing an XML API yourself, you should rarely need to worry about the details like this.

In C++ you can use EscapeXML ATL API. This is the correct way of handling special chars ...

^{New, improved answer to an old, frequently asked question...}

When to escape double quote in XML

Double quote (") may appear without escaping:

• In XML textual content:

  <NoEscapeNeeded>He said, "Don't quote me."</NoEscapeNeeded>
  

• In XML attributes delimited by single quotes ('):

  <NoEscapeNeeded name='Pete "Maverick" Mitchell'/>
  

  Note: switching to single quotes (') also requires no escaping:

  <NoEscapeNeeded name="Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell"/>
  

Double quote (") must be escaped:

• In XML attributes delimited by double quotes:

  <EscapeNeeded name="Pete &quot;Maverick&quot; Mitchell"/>
  

Bottom line

Double quote (") must be escaped as " in XML only in very limited contexts.