utf8 character code in xml

blackhorse

\303\244, for example, this is the utf8 character saved in database. when export the data in php, I think due to it is export as in single quote string, the utf8 code would show utf8 character, but still show \303\244.

Any advices?

Thanks!

blackhorse

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<person>
<name>K\303\244n</name>
</person>
</root>

How could I parse this "K\303\244n" from this xml as utf8 characters "Kän", instead of 'K\303\244n'? it seems when I use simplexml, the string value is in single quote, so it will not read as Kän but as K\303\244n.

Or due to the xml is generated from the database, so if the value from the database
is K\303\244n, how could I generate the xml so the value would be parsed as Kän?

Thanks!

bradgrafelman

Does the data stored in the database actually contain backslash, 303, backslash 244? If so, why?? Why not just store 'ä' in the DB?

blackhorse

I am reading from 3rd party xml (it was from their database). I think they save it and output it wrong. Instead of ä, they save as 8 characters \303\244, but I am in the business that dealing with dozens maybe later on hundreds different data providers, I need to see if they got it wrong and couldn't fix it, I have a plan to do so. I think I have to find a class, map the code chart and replace the characters.

Weedpacket

Taking 303, 244 to be octal numerals then that would make the two-byte sequence 195,164. The Latin-1 interpretation of that sequence is "Ã¤", but in UTF-8 it does indeed code for a "Latin Small Letter A with Diaresis". So replace occurrences of "[i]nnn[/i]" with chr(octdec(nnn)) .

Whoever put that XML together either wasn't able to control the content or didn't know how to escape characters. Since the character set is UTF-8, then the two bytes 195, 164 could have been written directly (since they were already UTF-8 encoded) or, if they wanted to escape it anyway, used the proper XML numeric entity and written &#228;.