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HTML special characters not being caught - please can someone explain why?

Hello,

I have been using the function, parseToXML, in the attached code snippet to catch html special characters on my site for quite a while now and it has been working well.
Today i added several new fields to a table in my database and even though i am applying the same function to those new fields, it seems it is no longer able to replace the '&' and this is preventing my site from running.

Please can someone explain why this is happening and or suggest how i might fix it ?

Many thanks

p.s. contrast my current site (www.globexposure.net/index.php) and my current xml data script (www.globexposure.net/includes/read.php) >>>>
with my old site (www.globexposure.net/index_old.php)--- where i am not reading the data from the new fields (www.globexposure.net/includes/read_old.php)

function parseToXML($htmlStr)
{
$xmlStr=str_replace('<','&lt;',$htmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace('>','&gt;',$xmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace('"','&quot;',$xmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace("'",'&apos;',$xmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace("&",'&amp;',$xmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace('£','&pound;',$xmlStr);
$xmlStr=str_replace(chr(0x20).chr(0x10), '&#x2010;', $xmlStr);
// the line above should replace the line below! - just testing 1st
// $xmlStr=str_replace("-",'&mdash;',$xmlStr);
 
return(htmlspecialchars(str_replace("#","<br /><br />",$htmlStr), ENT_QUOTES));
return $xmlStr;
}

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index.php.txt
read.php.txt

SOLUTION

MortenSlotKristensen

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Daniish

ASKER

I tried your change of code but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

While we're on the subject however, is there a similar substitute for the £ symbol, which i currently try to catch as follows:
$xmlStr=str_replace('£','£',$xmlStr);

i'm currently testing with:
www.globexposure.net/includes/read_test.php

SOLUTION

MortenSlotKristensen

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

MortenSlotKristensen

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Daniish

ASKER

I have now fixed the issue regarding the ' & ' - thanks for your help.

However, the ' £ ' still won't display properly - at present it displays as a black diamond with a ' ? ' in the center! Do you have any further advice on this ?

Thanks again

MortenSlotKristensen

No problem.

Uhm.. It's in the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) and shows fine on me. What encoding are you using/displaying on the site?

MortenSlotKristensen

But you could always just use unicode encoding?

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

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Daniish

ASKER

Hmmm...not sure what encoding i am using - how does one tell?

I tried just adding:
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

to the <head></head> section of my main page (index.php) but this didn't seem to do anything!

MortenSlotKristensen

It has to be before the <head> like:

<html>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<head>
..

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MortenSlotKristensen

Or just try old fashion iso 8859-1

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

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Daniish

ASKER

I'm afraid it's still not displaying the £ symbol correctly!

What other character sets could i try using?

MortenSlotKristensen

Have a look at what your browsers character encoding is? In firefox, for instance, View -> Character Encoding

Daniish

ASKER

It is set to:

Unicode (UTF-8)

MortenSlotKristensen

Then you should be able to view the character using both really. Can I get a link to the site you can't see properly and try myself?

Daniish

ASKER

www.globexposure.net/index.php

Click on any pushpin marker > green arrow marker > icon
The £ symbol should display in the yellow box on the right-hand-side of the infowindow

MortenSlotKristensen

Yeah, that doesm't work for me either.
Actually, &pound ; is the same as &#163 ;
So I don't really get why it does not work..

Daniish

ASKER

I agree it's a very strange problem. I will award you the points for the help you've given me and ask this question again i think with a link to this question and see if anyone else can see something we might have missed.

Thanks again

MortenSlotKristensen

Thank you for the points! :)

Michel Plungjan

<html>
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

should be in the head