How do I make & a literal character in an XML parse?

[Ivan Marsh]

Hey Folks,

....and here I thought I was done with my AJAX application.

The XML my PHP app is returning to my JavaScript function has elements in
it that contain special characters... specifically the ampersand & which
hoses up the data. ex: Company Name = "K & B Construction".

Can anyone give me some idea of how I make the data coming out of my
database translate as literal characters in the XML output?

-thx

--
The USA Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic act in American history.
Feingold-Obama '08 - Because the Constitution isn't history,
It's the law.

[Janwillem Borleffs]

Ivan Marsh wrote:

Can anyone give me some idea of how I make the data coming out of my
database translate as literal characters in the XML output?

Simply by applying the htmlentities or htmlspecialchars function.
JW

[Bart Van der Donck]

Ivan Marsh wrote:

The XML my PHP app is returning to my JavaScript function has elements in
it that contain special characters... specifically the ampersand & which
hoses up the data. ex: Company Name = "K & B Construction".

Can anyone give me some idea of how I make the data coming out of my
database translate as literal characters in the XML output?

I think you should deal with this at the PHP side because '&' is
reserved for the declaration of entities. The best way is to encode
your special chars to html entities before adding them to the XML file.
I'ld say that PHP should have ready-to-go regexes for this kind of
things.

If necessary, you could add !ENTITY !DOCTYPE !ELEMENT headers etc, but
don't rely too much on parser-specific implementations. You'll do
yourself a big favour with that :-)

--
Bart

[Rik]

Bart Van der Donck wrote:

Ivan Marsh wrote:

The XML my PHP app is returning to my JavaScript function has
elements in it that contain special characters... specifically the
ampersand & which hoses up the data. ex: Company Name = "K & B
Construction".

Can anyone give me some idea of how I make the data coming out of my
database translate as literal characters in the XML output?

I think you should deal with this at the PHP side because '&' is
reserved for the declaration of entities. The best way is to encode
your special chars to html entities before adding them to the XML
file. I'ld say that PHP should have ready-to-go regexes for this kind
of
things.

There is, htmlentities().
Unfortunately, it doesn't recognize every character, and coverts the
ampersand in already converted entitities. In the comments, someone claims
to have written a better function for it:
http://www.prolifique.com/entities.php.txt

I haven't tried the code yet, maybe it's usefull here.

Grtz,
--
Rik Wasmus

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Ivan Marsh wrote:
<snip>

The XML my PHP app is returning to my JavaScript function has elements in
it that contain special characters... specifically the ampersand & which
hoses up the data. ex: Company Name = "K & B Construction".

<snip>

Not sure, if you need CDATA.

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

[Ivan Marsh]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:22:57 -0700, R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah wrote:

Ivan Marsh wrote:
<snip>

The XML my PHP app is returning to my JavaScript function has elements
in it that contain special characters... specifically the ampersand &
which hoses up the data. ex: Company Name = "K & B Construction".

<snip>

Not sure, if you need CDATA.

I just parsed them into &amp; and it works fine. Thanks.

--
The USA Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic act in American history.
Feingold-Obama '08 - Because the Constitution isn't history,
It's the law.