Question

I have a textarea in which I prints all my xml like this:

<form method="post" action="">
<textarea id="codeTextarea" name="thisxml" cols="100" rows="36">
<?php
$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->formatOutput = true;
$xml->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$xml->loadXML('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<data>
  <game id="103478">
    <opponent>Peter</opponent>
    <oppid>4</oppid>
    <lastdraw>0</lastdraw>
  </game>
  <game id="103479">
    <opponent>Peter</opponent>
    <oppid>4</oppid>
    <lastdraw>2</lastdraw>
  </game>
  <game id="103483">
    <opponent>James</opponent>
    <oppid>47</oppid>
    <lastdraw>2</lastdraw>
  </game>
</data>');

echo htmlspecialchars($xml->saveXML()); 
?>
</textarea>

I then on submit want to create/update the file with the new xml but all I get in the new xml document is this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

I try to save the xml like this with PHP:

$myFile = 'TEST.xml';
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = htmlspecialchars($_POST['thisxml']);
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);

Can somebody please tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance 😉

Answer 1

Using htmlspecialchars($_POST['thisxml']) would make your XML invalid an return something like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<data>
  <game id="103478">
    <opponent>Peter</opponent>
    <oppid>4</oppid>
    <lastdraw>0</lastdraw>
  </game>
  <game id="103479">
    <opponent>Peter</opponent>
    <oppid>4</oppid>
    <lastdraw>2</lastdraw>
  </game>
  <game id="103483">
    <opponent>James</opponent>
    <oppid>47</oppid>
    <lastdraw>2</lastdraw>
  </game>
</data>

Just use file_put_contents it combines the functions of fopen , fwrite , fclose

file_put_contents('TEST.xml', $_POST['thisxml']);