How do I make the ö character appear properly in an XML file created via PHP?

Question

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php: using DomDocument whenever I try to write UTF-8 it writes the hexadecimal notation of it.

Here is a snippet of code:

echo "<char>".$row{'char'}."</char>";

row{'char'} is pulling back the german character ö from the database. In PHP, how can I convert that to the correct encoding to be used properly in XML?

Is there a PHP function that can convert everything as needed to the correct format for XML? Or do I need to do it character by character, like so?

echo "<format>".str_replace("&", "&amp;", $row{'format'})."</format>";

Thanks for the help!

Does the XML processing instruction contain the encoding, e.g. `` — Matt Ball, Mar 14 '11 at 19:56

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 14 '11 at 20:08

Without knowing what encoding you have in your database and what encoding you want in your XML output it's hard to be specific, but the iconv function could be useful to do the conversion.

Also. you should really consider using an XML DOM instead of outputting xml-as-plaintext with echo. Check out for example Reading and writing the XML DOM with PHP . If you don't, you will most likely end up with other strange problems with your xml output down the road.

Trust me, I've been there. :-)

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 14 '11 at 20:06

-1

Passing the data pulled from the database through htmlentities() should do that. It changes "ö" to "ö".

echo "<char>".htmlentities($row{'char'})."</char>";

The PHP Manual

edited Mar 14 '11 at 20:06

Chris

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answered Mar 14 '11 at 20:03

ARandomOWl

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An XML document isn't necessarily a HTML document; Encoding 'ö' as ö might not be valid or produce what's expected. – Anders Lindahl Mar 14 '11 at 20:09
Yes, my bad. I realised after re-reading the question. – ARandomOWl Mar 14 '11 at 20:14

How do I make the ö character appear properly in an XML file created via PHP?

2 Answers2