Formatting string for xml attribute in php

Question

I have some strings that are valid in my database but when I include them in an attribute of a UTF-8 XML output they give me the following error:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

My current code (simplified):

header('Content-Type: text/xml'); 
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>';
echo '<root attribute="' . htmlentities($string_from_hell) . '">';

How should I format these strings before including them in XML attributes?

A possible value for $string_from_hell: î„œ (don't know if it will show up properly)

I wouldn't use a word "sanitize" here. "Formatting" seems more appropriate word to me. — Your Common Sense
– Your Common Sense, Commented Aug 12, 2010 at 11:54

Artefacto · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-12 11:50:03Z

6

Try

htmlspecialchars($string_from_hell, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8")

htmlentities won't do because it will create HTML entities that are not recognized in XML, only HTML. You should also specify the charset because the default is not UTF-8, it's the ISO-8859-1.

You're also missing the quotes (") around the attribute value.

There are also better ways to create XML files that handle escaping for you. See e.g. XMLWriter.

edited Aug 12, 2010 at 11:50

answered Aug 12, 2010 at 11:42

Artefacto

98.1k17 gold badges207 silver badges230 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

Joey Over a year ago

I think the real answer should be to use the appropriate DOM APIs to construct the XML instead of string concatenation. Also the OP's code misses the quotes around the attribute value as far as I can tell.

Artefacto Over a year ago

@Johan You're right, I missed the quotes. As to the DOM API, I think it's unnecessarily complicated (and inefficient) for XML building unless you need the complete DOM tree afterwards.

Joey Over a year ago

No idea how those APIs look in PHP. But something SAX-like might suffice too (which XMLWriter seems to be). I'm not doing that much in XML so pardon the inaccuracy :-)

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Formatting string for xml attribute in php

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related