title: How to include ampersand in connection string?
body: <p>I'm using Entity Framework 4 for a simple app and would like to bake my connection credentials into the following connection string:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;connectionStrings&gt;
      &lt;add name="MyEntities"    
           connectionString="metadata=res://*/MyDataModel.csdl|res://*/MyDataModel.ssdl|res://*/MyDataModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&amp;quot;Data Source=localhost\DEV;Initial Catalog=MyDB;UserId=myUser;Password=jack&amp;jill;MultipleActiveResultSets=True&amp;quot;" 
           providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" /&gt;
  &lt;/connectionStrings&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, the password (which I cannot change) contains an ampersand.  ASP.NET throws:
  <code>Configuration Error: An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line XX, position YYY.</code></p>
  
  <p>If I replace the ampersand in the password with <code>&amp;amp;</code>, I get a <code>SqlException: Login failed for user 'myUser'.</code>  Usually this trick works, but I'm guessing that something is failing because this is technically a connection string inside a connection string.</p>
  
  <p>What should I do here?  Most of my classes include code like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>using (var context = new MyEntities()) {
     // do work
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><strong>Update:</strong>  It turns out that the credentials I am using are a domain account, so what I really need is <code>Integrated Security=True</code> in the connection string rather than a password.</p>
  
  <p>Encoding the ampersand as indicated in the accepted answer <em>should</em> work fine, though I haven't tested it.</p>