PHP XML Entity Encoding issue

Question

Having spent a few hours researching I have been unable to come up with an answer for this. I am trying to send an XML string to a third party so I need to encode some characters, in this case single and perhaps double quotes. I use the PHP XML Dom to achieve this but the saveXML() function always unencodes quotes it seems. A very simple example is below and when you view the output, ' has been replaced with ' but the others still have their codes. Can anyone explain why this is and how I can get around it (without doing a str_replace). Thanks.

$XMLDoc = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
$comments = $XMLDoc->createElement('Comments');
    $text = $XMLDoc->createElement('Text', "An apostrophe here &lt; &apos; &gt; Pound sign: &pound;");
$comments->appendChild($text);
$XMLDoc->appendChild($comments);
echo $XMLDoc->saveXML();

Just to clarify, if you replace ' with &039; it still does the same thing — Robin Charisse
– Robin Charisse, Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 16:29
I blame the fact that it's not part of HTML 4.01, though I can't say why this would have any effect in this situation. — cmbuckley
– cmbuckley, Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 21:17

mainegreen · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-14 18:50:05Z

2

You need to use a createEntityReference function to get it to pass through unmolested.

Example:

$XMLDoc = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
$comments = $XMLDoc->createElement('Comments');

$text1 = $XMLDoc->createTextNode('An apostrophe here < ');
$text2 = $XMLDoc->createEntityReference('apos');
$text3 = $XMLDoc->createTextNode(' > Pound sign: ');
$text4 = $XMLDoc->createEntityReference('pound');

$comments->appendChild($text1);
$comments->appendChild($text2);
$comments->appendChild($text3);
$comments->appendChild($text4);
$XMLDoc->appendChild($comments);
echo $XMLDoc->saveXML();

Note that some items are encoded by default by createTextNode. < and > are encoded, pound signs are not. Hope this helps!

answered Feb 14, 2012 at 18:50

mainegreen

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1 Comment

Robin Charisse Over a year ago

Thanks for the reply but this all seems very cumbersome just for the sake of having an encoded apostrophe. Is there no setting in the php DOM to prevent it from unencoding entities? To me this sounds like a php bug so I might report it to them

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