PHP, mySQL, XML and Flash.... problems with French Accents

[josh_g]

Hello,

I am getting data from a mySQL DB using PHP. From this information I create a XML file which is then read from Flash.

My problem is with French accents. They are saved fine to the DB and written fine to the XML file. At least I think so. Here is an example of the XML file that is created with french accents.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#' xmlns:dc = 'http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/' xmlns='http://purl.org/rss/1.0/'>
<channel rdf:about='http://www.whereever.com/'>
        <title>TITLE</title>
        <link>[url]http://www.somewhere.com[/url]</link>
        <description>Description</description>
</channel>
	    <item>
                <title>French Title</title>
                <description>médias situés Collèges</description>
                <dc:date>2003-11-14</dc:date>
	    </item>
	    <item>
                <title>Another French Title</title>
                <description> 2ième réseau</description>
                <dc:date>2003-11-09</dc:date>
	    </item>
</rdf:RDF>

When this XML file is read in Flash it does not produce the correct accents. If I go in and manually edit the XML file (like insert a space somewhere) and then re-save the XML file. Then reload the Flash object, everything works fine. The accents come out as they should.

Does anyone know of any fixes for this, or has had any experience with the same type of problem. Perhaps it is in the way I am opening and writing the XML file using PHP.

Thanks in advance,

-Josh

[webdes03]

Never had to deal with your problem before, but here's something I think I'd try...

try replacing all of your accented characters with that characters HEX code...

You can get a list of them all here:
http://www.obkb.com/dcljr/charstxt.html

That might be a lot of work for you, but It could be that flash is just cutting off the accent, a character code might force it to display the correct character. But then again, depending on how your script is written, it might just echo out the character code.

Try just a couple of characters before you do them all, incase it doesn't work 😉

[webdes03]

Just had another idea... you could use a search/replace script to change all of the accented characters to hex codes...

Look here: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

[suntra]

Tu dois sûrement parler français, alors je te conseille d'utiliser la fonction htmlentities(). Elle convertir tous les accents et autres caractères comme "<" ">" "&", ... en leur valeur "spéciale". Exemple :
é devient &eacute;
à devient &agrave;
< devient &lt;

etc.