Sharepoint Lists.asmx: remove "ows_MetaInfo" field from GetListItems method response xml

The following question was posted in other forum, but there was no response, I am facing the same problem and I think it will get some answers here :

Question :

I am making use of the SharePoint 2007 GetListItems web service to programatically retrieve all documents within a document library. However, my program is throwing an Exception due to an invalid character contained within the XML response. The bad data is within the Word document itself. There are control characters within the Comments section of the document properties. The bad characters are then ending up as  in the ows_MetaInfo field in the XML output which is invalid.

I have no need for the ows_MetaInfo field and so I have been trying to use the viewFields parameter to specify 开发者_运维技巧which fields to return along with setting the query option IncludeMandatoryColumns to false but the ows_MetaInfo field is always returned.

Does anyone know if it is possible to remove the ows_MetaInfo field from the output or somehow handle these invalid characters that are appearing in the XML output

In my case (SharePoint 2010) this solved the problem:

<soap:viewFields>
    <ViewFields Properties="True">
       <FieldRef Name="MetaInfo" Property="ModifiedBy" />
       <FieldRef Name="ID" />
       <FieldRef Name="LinkFilename" />
    </ViewFields>
</soap:viewFields>

This works for me to exclude the ows_MetaInfo field:

  <soap:GetListItems>
     <soap:listName>{....}</soap:listName>
     <soap:viewFields>
         <ViewFields Properties="True">
           <FieldRef Name="*"/>
           <FieldRef Name="MetaInfo"/>
         </ViewFields>
     </soap:viewFields>
  </soap:GetListItems>

See also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd964860(v=office.12).aspx

There are no way to remove this field from the output, or at least none that I've found. The MSDN documentation says that even if you set the IncludeMandatoryColumns to false, it will returns some mandatory fields.

I think your best option here is to fill a bug report to Microsoft, saying that invalid characters are put inside the ows_MetaInfo field.

Another thing you can try, but I don't know if it will resolve the problem it setting the Properties attribute of the ViewFields element to TRUE.

<ViewFields Properties="TRUE">your fieldrefs</ViewFields>