Encoding issue with XML

Question

I'm having an issue where the following HTML is stored in my database:

Carer £4.20 per person<br />

And is being output to XML with DOMDocument, as follows:

$content = htmlspecialchars($page->content);
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->formatOutput = true;

//create the root element
$root = $xmlDoc->appendChild(
$xmlDoc->createElement("document"));

$page->appendChild(
$xmlDoc->createElement("content", $content));

Resulting in

Carer &#xA3;4.20 per person&lt;br /&gt;

However, instead of the HEX encoding, is it possible to have the named HTML entities, e.g £ ?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 20 '13 at 15:31

However, instead of the HEX encoding, is it possible to have the named HTML entities, e.g £ ?

Yes and No. First of all no because you are using a XML and in XML there is no such named entity £ by default.

Yes, because you can output HTML instead ;) Let's see the example (online-demo):

$content = htmlspecialchars('Carer £4.20 per person<br />');

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$doc->formatOutput = true;


//create the root element
$root = $doc->appendChild(
    $doc->createElement("document")
);

$root->appendChild(
    $doc->createElement("content", $content)
);

echo "Save XML:\n", $doc->saveXML();
echo "\n\nSave HTML:\n", $doc->saveHTML();

And the output:

Save XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<document>
  <content>Carer &#xA3;4.20 per person&lt;br /&gt;</content>
</document>


Save HTML:
<document><content>Carer &pound;4.20 per person&lt;br /&gt;</content></document>

So remember: In XML there is a very limited set of named entities, in HTML there are many more. You can also add more named entities to XML. If you'er interested, please see

Named Character Elements for XML (by Anthony Coates, Zarella Rendon; 2 Jan 2003)

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 12:36

0

You get this error if your XML contains non ASCII characters, and the file was saved as single-byte ANSI (or ASCII) with no encoding specified.

answered Mar 20 '13 at 12:36

Engagedots CRM

9
2

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 12:36

0

Try removing the htmlspecialchars and see what happens?

http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php

answered Mar 20 '13 at 12:36

H2ONOCK

956
1
5
19

Alex Shesterov · Answer 4 · 2013-03-20T12:43:02.403

0

Very easy - just use htmlentities() instead of htmlspecialchars().

See http://de2.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php

But be warned - XML does not know HTML-entities like £! If you output XML, not HTML, then numeric references are the only solution.

edited Mar 20 '13 at 12:43

answered Mar 20 '13 at 12:37

Alex Shesterov

26,085
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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Yes, it should be possible - but it depends.

Look at pound from "IT view".

£ - sing of pound
pound - name of currency
£ - entity name
£ - entity code

Now, let's write all items from above without marking it as code. What is result?

£, pound, £, £ - as you see, 3rd and 4th has resulted to £ - but this is HTML. Belive me, I don't lie :P

But I strongly recommend you to use £ in XML!

If you wantmore info, you can visit:

Encoding issue with XML

5 Answers5

Yes, it should be possible - but it depends.