Winforms WebControl - How can I prevent escaping of links?

Question

I am developing in a Winforms .NET 4.0 project, using a WebControl as a WYSIWYG editor - working from the YARTE editor developed by Matt Groves.

I am trying to add an anchor tag and set the href attribute to the following path:

var path = http://someurl.aspx?param1="val1"&param2="val2"&param3="youGetTheIdea"

I have tried several approaches; I always get HTML-escaped ampersands when I try to write the url to the document:

http://someurl.aspx?param1="this"&param2="doesnt"&param3="work"

Approaches I Have Tried Unsuccessfully:

1. Creating the Link

   webBrowser.ExecCommand("CreateLink", false, path)
   

2. Creating the HTML and pasting it in:

   var htmlDocument2 = args.Document.DomDocument as IHTMLDocument2;
   if (htmlDocument2 == null) return;
   var range = htmlDocument2.selection.createRange() as IHTMLTxtRange;
   if (range == null) return;
   range.pasteHTML(string.Format(path, range.text));
   

3. Creating a file and directing the webBrowser to it:

   // assume the links are already inserted, but aren't right.
   var textWithBadLinks = webBrowser.DocumentText;
   var betterText = UseRegexToReplaceBadLinkText(textWithBadLinks);
   using (StreamWriter outfile =new StreamWriter(@"c:\test.html"))
   {
     outfile.Write(betterText);
   }
   webBrowser.Url= new Uri(@"c:\test.html");
   

4. Creating a stream and directing the webBrowser to it:

   // same as above, but instead of the URL, use the DocumentStream:
   webBrowser.DocumentStream = new StreamWriter(@c:\test.html);
   

5. Navigating to the file:

   webBrowser.Navigate(new Uri(@"c:\test.html"))
   

Regardless of the approach I choose, the ampersands get escaped the links don't work.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Answer 1

Technically speaking, XHTML requires &amp to be valid. See: XHTML and & (Ampersand) encoding