PHP automaticly parses my string?

Question

Some Background info: My web application stores some XML in a Text column of the MySQL database. This XML represents a transaction for the application.

The problem occurs when I'm testing my library. Within PHP, I have a string:

$s="<flist><transaction amount=\"10\" type=\"income\">Initial Amount</transaction></flist>";

However, whenever I echo or consecrate this string, it turns into "Initial Amount". Am I missing a feature of PHP? How can I fix this? Wow! As I'm creating this post, StackOverflow is transforming that XML into $s=Initial Amount as well... Please help... Thank-you for your time as this completely perplexes me.

I assumed surrounding it with pre tags would have prevented that, but yes, that was the issue. — PlagueEditor
– PlagueEditor, Commented Jun 12, 2010 at 5:51

Reece45 · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-12 05:41:19Z

3

PHP doesn't automatically parse the string.

Are you echoing it and viewing it in a browser? It's very likely that the browser skips over the unknown tags and shows what it can. You might want to considering adding in htmlspecialchars() to your output like so:

echo htmlspecialchars($s);

You should also see it correctly when viewing the web source. This is a feature of HTML to support future versions without breaking current ones.

answered Jun 12, 2010 at 5:41

Reece45

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PlagueEditor Over a year ago

Wow; that was it. I feel dumb... I thought surrounding it with pre tags would stop that. That was the problem. Thank-you!

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