Encoding error "entity not defined" in XML RSS feed with PHP MySQL query

Question

I am trying to develop my own XML RSS feed based on PHP output from MySQL queries. However I keep getting "entity X not defined" error messages for all the ASCII characters in my DB content fields, even though I have set everything to UTF8 encoding and charset (database connection, xml version, utf8_encode), but nothing removes the error:

<?php
$connection = mysqli_connect( .... )
$connection->set_charset("utf8");
header("Content-type: text/xml; charset=utf-8");
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>';
echo '<rss version="2.0">';
$query = mysqli_query($connection,"SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY pubdate DESC LIMIT 10");
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query)){
$title = utf8_encode($row['title']);
$content = utf8_encode($row['content']);
echo '<item><title>'.$title.'</title>';
echo '<description>'.$content.'</description></item>';
} // end while
echo '</channel>';
echo '</rss>';
?>

What am I missing?

Thanks a lot!

Please include the generated XML code (or a sufficiently long extract thereof) in the question. — Jukka K. Korpela
– Jukka K. Korpela, Commented Jun 12, 2014 at 9:11
The problem you have is that you create the XML by hand instead of using a library that has been created for creating XML, like in your case for example SimpleXML or DOMDocument. Those libraries take care of the proper XML encoding of UTF-8 encoded strings you get from your database. — hakre
– hakre, Commented Jun 12, 2014 at 19:30

arpan.r · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-12 08:58:39Z

2

I also faced the same issue and fixed using below link

I think you are looking for this

http://help.simplytestable.com/errors/html-validation/general-entity-x-not-defined-and-no-default-entity/

answered Jun 12, 2014 at 8:58

arpan.r

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1 Comment

Jon Cram Over a year ago

I'm the author of the above-linked help article. Good to see it coming in useful!

ThW · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-12 11:53:03Z

1

You will have to escape the $title and $content variables. Check htmlspecialchars().

For a better solution, use DOM to create the the XML. This will make sure that you create a valid XML.

answered Jun 12, 2014 at 11:53

ThW

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