[Resolved] [Resolved] RSS Feed: How do I handle secial chars

[groovything]

I'm trying to grab various rss feeds but some of them display special chars with their char codes. I try str replace and it works in some cases, but i cannot seem to fixt the html chars: '<' and '>'

see page here

here is my code:

<?
if($type==""){
$type="CNN";
}


?>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <td><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
      <tr>
        <td><b>News Feeds:</b>
		&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;<a class="<?if ($type=="CNN"){?>sel<?}?>menu" href="default.php?page=newsfeed&type=CNN&menu=news">CNN</a>&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;<a class="<?if ($type=="BBC"){?>sel<?}?>menu" href="default.php?page=newsfeed&type=BBC&menu=news">BBC</a>&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;<a class="<?if ($type=="Wired"){?>sel<?}?>menu" href="default.php?page=newsfeed&type=Wired&menu=news">Wired</a>&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;<a class="<?if ($type=="DVD"){?>sel<?}?>menu" href="default.php?page=newsfeed&type=DVD&menu=news">DVD's</a>&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;<a class="<?if ($type=="Automotive"){?>sel<?}?>menu" href="default.php?page=newsfeed&type=Automotive&menu=news">Automotive</a>
		</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td><?php

switch ($type) {
	case "BBC";
		$URL = "http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/world/rss091.xml";
	break;
case "Wired";
		$URL = "http://www.wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,,00.xml";
	break;
case "CNN";
		$URL = "http://rss.syntechsoftware.com/cnn.xml";
	break;
case "DVD";
		$URL = "http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/doc.rss";
	break;

}
echo "<p class='header'><b>$type News:</b><br>";
?>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td bgcolor="#ff0000"><img src="img/invis_pix.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>          <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
            <tr>
              <td><?php
class RSSParser {

var $insideitem = false;
var $tag = "";
var $title = "";
var $description = "";
var $link = "";

function startElement($parser, $tagName, $attrs) {
	if ($this->insideitem) {
		$this->tag = $tagName;
	} elseif ($tagName == "ITEM") {
		$this->insideitem = true;
	}
}

function endElement($parser, $tagName) {
	if ($tagName == "ITEM") {
		printf("<p><b><a href='%s' target=\"_blank\">%s</a></b>",
			trim($this->link),htmlspecialchars(trim($this->title)));
		printf("</br>%s</p>",htmlspecialchars(trim($this->description)));
		$this->title = "";
		$this->description = "";
		$this->link = "";
		$this->insideitem = false;
	}
}

function characterData($parser, $data) {
	if ($this->insideitem) {
	switch ($this->tag) {
		case "TITLE":
		$this->title .= $data;
		break;
		case "DESCRIPTION":
		$data = str_replace ("Double-Click for information on ","", $data);
		$data = str_replace ("&","", $data);
		//$data = str_replace ("lt;",">", $data);
		//$data = str_replace ("gt;","<", $data);
		$data = str_replace ("#151;","", $data);
		$data = str_replace ("#36;","$", $data);
		$this->description .= $data;
		break;
		case "LINK":
		$this->link .= $data;
		break;
	}
	}
}
}
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
$rss_parser = new RSSParser();
xml_set_object($xml_parser,&$rss_parser);
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");
$fp = fopen("$URL","r")
	or die("Error reading RSS data.");
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))
	xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
		or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d", 
			xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)), 
			xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
fclose($fp);
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);

?>
              </td>
              </tr>
          </table>
</td>
      </tr>
    </table></td>
  </tr>
</table>

[sid]

just a wild guess: did you check if they use utf-8 encoding?

[groovything]

I figured it out...I took out the

printf("</br>%s</p>",htmlspecialchars( trim($this->description)));

and printed it out like:

printf("</br>%s</p>",trim($this->description));

The htmlspecialchars was rendering the special characters as char codes and disabling the html tags