Remove space and break string lines

Question

I’m making a Webapi that generates an XML, this XML is read several times a day, so in the first run it serializes all my XML and saves it to disk, and during 24h it reads from disk instead of serializing the whole object again.

I do this because it has several accesses, XML are great some with up to 300mb, and information can be cached for 24h

The problem is that the description field, I believe it could be 'compressed' or better could try to make a Minify in xml before burning it to disk. I’m trying to remove the whitespace and line breaks just from that field for now so I already reduce some good megas.

Using Webapi in C#, Redis, MSSQL

Today I’m sending her like this:

    <description><![CDATA[SOBRADO

Área Terreno: 8 x 28
Área Construída: 170m&sup2;

Pavimento Superior:
2 dormitórios sendo 1 dormitorio com armario embutido planejado e um maste
banheiro
jardim de inverno
sacada


Pavimento Térreo:
2 salas
Copa
Cozinha
Corredor lateral
jardim na frente
quintal

Edícula:
1 dormitórios
banheiro
lavanderia
deposito

4 vagas

IPTU R$ 1.200,00 anual]]></description>

I would like to send so:

<description><![CDATA[SOBRADO Área Terreno: 8 x 28    Área Construída: 170m&sup2;...

I use 2 functions to try to clear the code, but it is not as you would like.

description = Biblioteca.RemoveTroublesomeCharacters(Biblioteca.CorrigeDescricao(imovel.Descricao)),

internal static string CorrigeDescricao(string descricao)
{
    var tab = '\u0009';
    descricao = descricao.Replace("  ", " ");
    descricao = descricao.Replace("=\r\n", "");
    descricao = descricao.Replace(";\r\n", "");
    descricao = descricao.Replace("\t", " ");
    descricao = descricao.Replace(tab.ToString(), "");
    return RemoveHtml(descricao);
}

And

 internal static string RemoveTroublesomeCharacters(string inString)
        {
            if (inString == null) return null;

            var newString = new StringBuilder();
            char ch;

            for (int i = 0; i < inString.Length; i++)
            {
                ch = inString[i];
                // remove any characters outside the valid UTF-8 range as well as all control characters
                // except tabs and new lines
                //if ((ch < 0x00FD && ch > 0x001F) || ch == '\t' || ch == '\n' || ch == '\r')
                //if using .NET version prior to 4, use above logic
                if (XmlConvert.IsXmlChar(ch)) //this method is new in .NET 4
                {
                    newString.Append(ch);
                }
            }
            return newString.ToString();
        }

Answer 1

NEVER treat XML as text. There are terms for those who do this that, although they are technical terms and even used in books, would cause me to be banned from here if I used them ;)

Instead, encapsulate everything you want in XML as an object that is serializable. Then use the Framework’s XML classes to generate the XML when writing, or read from a file. This will not only keep XML compact, it will ensure good formatting and save you hours of development.

Start with this class: Xmlwriter.

Answer 2

Dorathoto, I believe that better than removing spaces from the string, is to compress the entire Response.

The easiest way to do it without configuring it directly on IIS is to install the following Nuget: Microsoft ASP.NET Web API Compression

PM> Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Extensions.Compression.Server

Then run the following configuration in your Webapi Startup.:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.MessageHandlers.Insert(0, 
    new ServerCompressionHandler(
        new GZipCompressor(), 
        new DeflateCompressor())); 

Original Response (EN)

Answer 3

You can resolve the issue of the excesses of line breaking and space with REGEX :

Removing excesses

pattern : (\s){2,}
replace : $1

Will capture spacing characters repeat more than twice and replace with a single. Note that it replaces with the first found.

Example

'teste de quebra    '
'de linha     '

Applying would look like this:

'teste de quebra de linha '

because she joined the ' \n' and replaced by ' ', for ' ' was the first found

Removing line breaks

pattern : (\n){2,}
replace : $1

They are similar, but not the same because this only considers line breaking, maybe it is necessary to change to ( n r?){2,} because Windows some windows Ides still add the car return.

Example

'quebra de linha     '

'em duas     '

Applying gets like this:

'quebra de linha'
'em duas'

Answer 4

I had a similar problem but I needed the description to have at most a line break and at most a space between words, including tabs. Below is the use of Pattern that can solve your problem:

Using Pattern with regex replace