Replace '&' with '&' in PHP string

Question

I need to convert the & in a string to & in php. I have a function to pull in some custom data in to an RSS feed. In this case it is a url which could look something like http://google.com?something=here&somethingelse=here&somethingelse=there

The problem is the amperstand shows in the feed and is not converted to & so when I try using simplepie to fetch the feed it throws an error This XML document is invalid, likely due to invalid characters. XML error: not well-formed (invalid token)

This is the function I have to add the custom data to the feed:

/** Add ACF fields to RSS **/
add_action('rss2_item', 'cupusa_rss2_item');
function cupusa_rss2_item() {
    global $post;

    $memberEvent_link = get_field('member_event_link', $post->ID);

    $output = '';
    if( $post->post_type == 'jobs' ) {
        $job_link_url = get_field('job_link', $post->ID);

            $output .= "<job_link>{$job_link_url}</job_link>";

    }

    if($memberEvent_link){
        $output .= "<member_event_link>{$memberEvent_link}</member_event_link>";
    }

    echo $output;
}

When using simplepie it is pulling this http://google.com?something=here&somethingelse=here&somethingelse=there when it should be proper xml like this http://google.com?something=here&somethingelse=here&somethingelse=there

So my question is how do I modify my function above to convert the & to & for the $job_link_url variable? Sometimes the link may have the & and sometimes it may not.

Quentin · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-06 15:19:59Z

2

The htmlspecialchars function will convert all characters which have special meaning in XML.

$job_link_url = get_field('job_link', $post->ID);
$xml_safe_job_link_url = htmlspecialchars($job_link_url, ENT_XML1 | ENT_QUOTES);

answered Apr 6, 2016 at 15:19

Quentin

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1 Comment

Audite Marlow Over a year ago

In addition, if you want to use & in an URL, PHP offers you urlencode().

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