How do I stop QXmlStreamWriter from escaping quotation marks?

Question

Let me begin by expressing my understanding that what I'm trying to do is not normal, nor is it typically well advised. I'm fully aware that in normal XML, the `"` character is reserved. I'm generating `.vcxproj` files to use in Visual Studio 2010, using a Qt application. I'm taking advantage of the `QXmlStreamWriter` class to write the XML needed for the project file. However, I'm running into a problem due to Microsoft's non-compliance with the XML standard. In `CustomBuild` elements, the user needs to specify the command for building the file. In the case of Qt projects within Visual Studio, you end up with something like this: ``` <Command Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|Win32'">"$(QTDIR)\bin\moc.exe" "%(FullPath)" -o "..\myproj\moc_%(Filename).cpp" -DUNICODE -DWIN32 -DQT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT -DQT_DLL -DQT_CORE_LIB -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_XML_LIB -DQT_SQL_LIB -DQT_OPENGL_LIB -DQT_QT3SUPPORT_LIB -DQT3_SUPPORT -DQT_SVG_LIB "-I." "-I$(QTDIR)\include" "-I$(QTDIR)\include\QtCo…

Accepted Answer

I guess you are using `QXmlStreamWriter::writeCharacters` or similar to write the strings which contain `"` ?

Perhaps, before calling that function, you could check if the string you are about to write contains `"`. If it does, you could split it on `"`, write the non-`"` characters via `QXmlStreamWriter::writeCharacters`, and write `"` directly to the underlying `QIODevice`:

```
QString maybeHasQuotes = ...;
QStringList parts = maybeHasQuotes.split('"');
while (!parts.isEmpty()) {
    QString part = parts.takeFirst();
    writer.writeCharacters(part);
    if (!parts.isEmpty()) {
        writer.device()->putChar('"');
    }
}
```

How do I stop QXmlStreamWriter from escaping quotation marks?

Solution

Problem