How to put an encoding attribute to xml other that utf-16 with XmlWriter?

Question

I've got a function creating some XmlDocument:

public string CreateOutputXmlString(ICollection<Field> fields)
{
    XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
    settings.Indent = true;
    settings.Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1250");

    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(builder, settings);

    writer.WriteStartDocument();
    writer.WriteStartElement("data");
    foreach (Field field in fields)
    {
        writer.WriteStartElement("item");
        writer.WriteAttributeString("name", field.Id);
        writer.WriteAttributeString("value", field.Value);
        writer.WriteEndElement();
    }
    writer.WriteEndElement();
    writer.Flush();
    writer.Close();

    return builder.ToString();
}

I set an encoding but after i create XmlWriter it does have utf-16 encoding. I know it's because strings (and StringBuilder i suppose) are encoded in utf-16 and you can't change it.
So how can I easily create this xml with the encoding attribute set to "windows-1250"? it doesn't even have to be encoded in this encoding, it just has to have the specified attribute.

edit: it has to be in .Net 2.0 so any new framework elements cannot be used.

Answer 1

You need to use a StringWriter with the appropriate encoding. Unfortunately StringWriter doesn't let you specify the encoding directly, so you need a class like this:

public sealed class StringWriterWithEncoding : StringWriter
{
    private readonly Encoding encoding;

    public StringWriterWithEncoding (Encoding encoding)
    {
        this.encoding = encoding;
    }

    public override Encoding Encoding
    {
        get { return encoding; }
    }
}

(This question is similar but not quite a duplicate.)

EDIT: To answer the comment: pass the StringWriterWithEncoding to XmlWriter.Create instead of the StringBuilder, then call ToString() on it at the end.