HTML Chars in XML

[tperry]

I have got a XML file that I am trying to read into a database
using PHP. When I encounter a HTML & symbol I seem to get a line break in the content.

The content I have is something like this:

<BriefDesc>Liverpool & Man Utd go head to head</BriefDesc>

When I try to read this is, it is output as:

Liverpool
&
Man Utd go head to head

I am using the usual way of reading in XML files

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");

Everything else is working fine its just when I seem to hit a HTML
& character, I am using the htmlentities() function to change to HTML chars from the string before it gets written to the XML file and thats working fine, its just when i try to read it back in, i get this line break. I have tried upping the file buffer to allow more data to be read in but this has no effect.

Any ideas?

Tony

[trexx]

you should check what happens if you use

<BriefDesc>Liverpool &amp; Man Utd go head to head</BriefDesc> 

(damn... i'd like to write a HTML-entity for that fXXXing & but it doesn't work. so try &/a/m/p/; (without the slashes) instead of &. sorry... i'm too dumb to use this board properly g)

without the htmlentities func. if that fails, it's maybe a problem with the encoding of your xml document (try ISO-8859-1) and finally, you could (but shouldn't g) put the string into a CDATA element.

[tperry]

Trexx thanks for the response, when I wrote "When I encounter a HTML & symbol " i did type &a/m/p; (but I'm too dumb to work this forum as well!) but it came out as &

The encoding for the xml document is set to ISO-8859-1 already and the element in the XML doc was a PCData and now its CDATA, but unfortunatly no difference when I do the import. :mad:

Any other ideas?

[trexx]

Hm, could you attach your xml file to the board? honestly i don't think that i'll find an error there... it's just a last glimpse of hope g

Maybe it's just a weird behaviour of the XML-parser. In that case you could just remove the newlines in the read string, couldn't you? (i know... it's ugly)

[tperry]

this is a small extract of the xml file that we have. the whole file is rather large (1000 plus lines)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE Collection SYSTEM "http://192.168.0.1/wow/collections.dtd">
<Collection CollectionID="10">
<Themes>
<Theme ThemeID="9">
<ThemeName>Archives</ThemeName>
<ThemeDescription>Archives shows you how to use the resources in the area.</ThemeDescription>
<SubThemes>
<SubThemeName SubThemeID="11">BMW & Williams get wet for no reason</SubThemeName>
</SubThemes>
</Theme>
</Themes>

as for removing the new lines

i have tried to do this but it seems to be skipping to the next iteration of the loop before i can remove anything!!

just been speaking to the client and they have said its ok to turn & into and!! but i would like to resolve this for my own sanity!!

thanks for perservering

Tony

[vronsky]

Don'know if can help,but you can convert the xml data into an array :

/**************XML TO ARRAY*********************/

function fetch_xml($xml){

if(is_file($xml)){
    $xml_data = file_get_contents($xml);
}
else{
    $xml_data = $xml;    
}
$parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_parse_into_struct($parser, $xml_data, &$assoc_arr, &$idx_arr);
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING, 0);
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE, 1);
$root_tag = $assoc_arr[0]['tag'];
$base_tag = strtolower($assoc_arr[1]['tag']);
$i = 0;
foreach($assoc_arr as $key => $element){
    if($element['tag'] != $root_tag){
        if(!preg_match('/^s+$/', $element['value'])){
            $tag = strtolower($element['tag']);
            $items[$i][$tag] = $element['value'];
            if($tag == $base_tag){
                $i++;
            }
        }
        elseif(isset($element['attributes'])){
            $items[$i]['id'] = $element['attributes']['ID'];
        }
    }
}

return $items;
}

than you store the data into the database

$my_xml_data="xml.file";

$items = fetch_xml($my_xml_data);

/* you can read your array */

print_r($items);

and then you store the data you're interested in.
isn't it?