Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML(): htmlParseEntityRef: expecting ';' in Entity,

Question

$html = file_get_contents("http://www.somesite.com/");

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html);

echo $dom;

throws

Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML(): htmlParseEntityRef: expecting ';' in Entity,
Catchable fatal error: Object of class DOMDocument could not be converted to string in test.php on line 10

score 176 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 29 '16 at 17:14

176

To evaporate the warning, you can use libxml_use_internal_errors(true)

// create new DOMDocument
$document = new \DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');

// set error level
$internalErrors = libxml_use_internal_errors(true);

// load HTML
$document->loadHTML($html);

// Restore error level
libxml_use_internal_errors($internalErrors);

edited Mar 29 '16 at 17:14

John Magnolia

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answered May 07 '12 at 13:05

Dewsworld

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score 100 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 23 '11 at 01:24

100

I would bet that if you looked at the source of http://www.somesite.com/ you would find special characters that haven't been converted to HTML. Maybe something like this:

<a href="/script.php?foo=bar&hello=world">link</a>

Should be

<a href="/script.php?foo=bar&amp;hello=world">link</a>

answered Feb 23 '11 at 01:24

mattalxndr

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Just to expand on this, if the & character is even in text and not an HTML attribute, it still needs to be escaped to &. The reason the parser is throwing the error is because after seeing an & it's expecting a ; to terminate the HTML entity. – Kyle Jul 26 '12 at 16:17
25

...and to expand further, calling `htmlentities()` or similar on the string will fix the problem. – Ben Jun 26 '13 at 06:16

score 56 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 28 '14 at 22:34

56

$dom->@loadHTML($html);

This is incorrect, use this instead:

@$dom->loadHTML($html);

edited Jan 28 '14 at 22:34

hichris123

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answered Oct 16 '10 at 05:28

Maanas Royy

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or $dom->strictErrorChecking = false; – Tjorriemorrie Jul 28 '11 at 10:42
9

This is a terrible solution as you will make errors on this line a nightmare to debug. @Dewsworld's solution is much better. – Gerry Aug 01 '13 at 02:32
what is the `@` for ? – Francisco Corrales Morales Feb 12 '14 at 22:12
@FranciscoCorrales http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3737139/reference-what-does-this-symbol-mean-in-php It basically suppresses errors – d-_-b Mar 08 '14 at 17:46
4

This is a very dirty solution and this won´t fix everything. – Mirko Brunner Dec 08 '15 at 13:22
2

While your answer will work around the problem, the line "This is incorrect" is, itself, incorrect. – TecBrat Feb 25 '17 at 22:24

score 16 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 17 '19 at 22:56

There are 2 errors: the second is because $dom is no string but an object and thus cannot be "echoed". The first error is a warning from loadHTML, caused by invalid syntax of the html document to load (probably an & (ampersand) used as parameter separator and not masked as entity with &).

You ignore and supress this error message (not the error, just the message!) by calling the function with the error control operator "@" (http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.errorcontrol.php )

@$dom->loadHTML($html);

score 12 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 06 '09 at 03:46

12

The reason for your fatal error is DOMDocument does not have a __toString() method and thus can not be echo'ed.

You're probably looking for

echo $dom->saveHTML();

answered Nov 06 '09 at 03:46

Mike B

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score 11 · Answer 6 · edited Jan 22 '14 at 19:25

11

Regardless of the echo (which would need to be replaced with print_r or var_dump), if an exception is thrown the object should stay empty:

DOMNodeList Object
(
)

Solution

Set recover to true, and strictErrorChecking to false

$content = file_get_contents($url);

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->recover = true;
$doc->strictErrorChecking = false;
$doc->loadHTML($content);

Use php's entity-encoding on the markup's contents, which is a most common error source.

edited Jan 22 '14 at 19:25

Swivel

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answered Sep 12 '11 at 10:43

Lorenz Lo Sauer

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On the first solution you wrote dom instead of doc. – Máthé Endre-Botond Dec 26 '11 at 20:38
this worked for me I only added $content = mb_convert_encoding( $content, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'UTF-8' ); – Jacek Pietal Sep 24 '14 at 10:02

score 10 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 16 '14 at 22:32

replace the simple

$dom->loadHTML($html);

with the more robust ...

libxml_use_internal_errors(true);

if (!$DOM->loadHTML($page))
    {
        $errors="";
        foreach (libxml_get_errors() as $error)  {
            $errors.=$error->message."<br/>";
        }
        libxml_clear_errors();
        print "libxml errors:<br>$errors";
        return;
    }

score 9 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 11:19

9

$html = file_get_contents("http://www.somesite.com/");

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML(htmlspecialchars($html));

echo $dom;

try this

answered Nov 22 '17 at 11:19

nmwi22

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Nicolas Bouvrette · Answer 9 · 2019-10-06T17:25:28.863

I know this is an old question, but if you ever want ot fix the malformed '&' signs in your HTML. You can use code similar to this:

$page = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com');
$page = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', trim($page));
fixAmps($page, 0);
$dom->loadHTML($page);


function fixAmps(&$html, $offset) {
    $positionAmp = strpos($html, '&', $offset);
    $positionSemiColumn = strpos($html, ';', $positionAmp+1);

    $string = substr($html, $positionAmp, $positionSemiColumn-$positionAmp+1);

    if ($positionAmp !== false) { // If an '&' can be found.
        if ($positionSemiColumn === false) { // If no ';' can be found.
            $html = substr_replace($html, '&amp;', $positionAmp, 1); // Replace straight away.
        } else if (preg_match('/&(#[0-9]+|[A-Z|a-z|0-9]+);/', $string) === 0) { // If a standard escape cannot be found.
            $html = substr_replace($html, '&amp;', $positionAmp, 1); // This mean we need to escape the '&' sign.
            fixAmps($html, $positionAmp+5); // Recursive call from the new position.
        } else {
            fixAmps($html, $positionAmp+1); // Recursive call from the new position.
        }
    }
}

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 22 '13 at 18:57

3

Another possibile solution is

$sContent = htmlspecialchars($sHTML);
$oDom = new DOMDocument();
$oDom->loadHTML($sContent);
echo html_entity_decode($oDom->saveHTML());

answered Oct 22 '13 at 18:57

lastYorsh

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This will not work. According to http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php, all html special characters are escaped too. Take for example this piece of HTML code `Hello World`. Running this into `htmlspecialchars` will produce `<span>Hello World&lt/span>` which isn't HTML anymore. DOMDocument::loadHTML will not treat it as HTML anymore but as a string. – Twisted Whisper Oct 23 '13 at 10:48
This works for me: ``$oDom = new DOMDocument(); $oDom->loadHTML($sHTML); echo html_entity_decode($oDom->saveHTML());`` – Bartłomiej Jakub Kwiatek Mar 31 '16 at 09:50

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 21 '19 at 05:38

0

Another possibile solution is,maybe your file is ASCII type file,just change the type of your files.

answered Jun 21 '19 at 05:38

FRANK

1

score -1 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 03:48

-1

Even after this my code is working fine , so i just removed all warning messages with this statement at line 1 .

<?php error_reporting(E_ERROR); ?>

answered Sep 03 '20 at 03:48

Stephen

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Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML(): htmlParseEntityRef: expecting ';' in Entity,

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