PHP Issue: simplexml_load_string parser error : Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding !

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 02 August 2016; Hits: 6124

What?
A quick article to stop me running into this issue again. This article serves to address the issue of importing characters from an XML in a different language character set and trying to load it in PHP with the function simplexml_load_string(). The error I get is something similar to:

PHP Warning:
simplexml_load_string(): Entity: line #: parser error : Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding ! Bytes: 0xA0 0x3C 0x2F 0x73 in /home/public_html/my_folder/my_xml_processing_script.php on line 160

Why?
I'm downloading an XML feed to our servers, and then loading the downloaded file into memory with simplexml_load_string(). I get the above error when it is attempting to load an XML feed which is mostly in Spanish and breaks at the following XML node:

copy raw

<baÃ±os>2</baÃ±os>

-> yields issue: PHP Warning:  simplexml_load_string():     <baÃ±os>2</baÃ±os> in /home/public_html/my_folder/my_xml_processing_script.php on line 160

should read

<baños>2</baños>

<baÃ±os>2</baÃ±os>
-> yields issue: PHP Warning: simplexml_load_string(): <baÃ±os>2</baÃ±os> in /home/public_html/my_folder/my_xml_processing_script.php on line 160
should read
<baños>2</baños>

How?

A two-step process, my issue was with how the file was downloaded with cURL. The XML node should be baños.

The initial command using cURL was:

copy raw

function get_data($url) {
        $ch = curl_init();
        $timeout = 5;
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
        $data = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
        return $data;
}
$file_content = get_data( "http://joellipman.com/xml_feeds/my_XML_url.xml" );
$file_xml = simplexml_load_string( $file_content );  // doesn't work and returns a load of parser errors

function get_data($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
$file_content = get_data( "http://joellipman.com/xml_feeds/my_XML_url.xml" );
$file_xml = simplexml_load_string( $file_content ); // doesn't work and returns a load of parser errors

The tweaked command using cURL is:

copy raw

function get_data($url) {
        $ch = curl_init();
        $timeout = 5;
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
        $data = utf8_decode(curl_exec($ch));  // note the utf8_decode function applied here
        curl_close($ch);
        return $data;
}
$file_content = get_data( "http://joellipman.com/xml_feeds/my_XML_url.xml" );
$file_xml = simplexml_load_string( utf8_encode( $file_content ) );  // works!  DONE! Stop reading any further and tell your boss it was always in hand.

function get_data($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$data = utf8_decode(curl_exec($ch)); // note the utf8_decode function applied here
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
$file_content = get_data( "http://joellipman.com/xml_feeds/my_XML_url.xml" );
$file_xml = simplexml_load_string( utf8_encode( $file_content ) ); // works! DONE! Stop reading any further and tell your boss it was always in hand.

Other things I tried but to no avail
The solution above was as easy as that. Here are a number of other things I tried first:

mysql_set_charset(): No
iconv(): No
htmlentities(): No
preg_replace_callback(): No
sxe(): No
$xml = simplexml_load_string( utf8_encode($rss) );: No. Oh wait, yes! sorta, don't forget the decode when downloading the XML.

Category: Personal Home Page :: Article: 642