Question

I have an XML file which I’m parsing with SimpleXML in php. The first line is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

The result of the parse is stored in $xml, if I do:

echo $xml->asXML();

then the entire file displays perfectly.

But if I dig into the structure in anyway, I get Â’s everwhere, eg:

echo $xml->Chapter->asXML();

Inside some of the XML elements there is MathML (<math>), this is where the Â’s occur.
For example the character ∈ is replaced by a Â.

How can I parse the XML file but not lose the MathML characters?

Answer 1

∈ is not a character that can be represented in ISO 8859-1, change your XML to say that it is encoded with UTF-8.

To give an example demonstrating the problem.

$x = simplexml_load_string('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<example><math>∈</math></example>');
echo $x->math, PHP_EOL;

$x = simplexml_load_string('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<example><math>∈</math></example>');
echo $x->math, PHP_EOL;

Outputs (as UTF-8) the following.

â
∈

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SimpleXML will try to convert to UTF-8 when the encoding is set to something different. It is always a good idea not to give it that work to do when the input is already UTF-8 encoded and the encoding declaration is incorrect.

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Also be sure that PHP itself is outputting UTF-8, and telling the browser that this is the case!

You can do this by setting the default_charset INI option (in your php.ini or with ini_set()), or sending the correct Content-Type header (header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8')).