XML is automatically encoding

Question

I am trying to dynamically create XML but i've run into a snag, for somereason it's automatically encoding the < and >, i need it to stop that because it's breaking my tags but i can't see anywhere in my function it's tell it to encode.

function GenerateList($titleB, $descB, $thumbB, $dirB, $patternB){
if (is_dir($dirB)){
$myDirectory = opendir($dirB);
// get each entry
while($entryName = readdir($myDirectory)) {
    $dirArray[] = $entryName;
}

// close directory
closedir($myDirectory);

//  count elements in array
$indexCount = count($dirArray);
print ("<center><h1>'$titleB' Directory</h1>");
$true_count = 0;

// sort em
sort($dirArray);
$outputB = "<CATEGORY name=\"$titleB\" desc=\"$descB\" thumb=\"$thumbB\">";
print("<TABLE border=1 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 class=whitelinks>");
print("<TR><TH>Filename</TH><th>Filesize</th><TH>Filename</TH><th>Filesize</th><TH>Filename</TH><th>Filesize</th></TR>");
print("<TR><TD colspan=2><TABLE border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 class=whitelinks>");
// loop through the array of files and print them all
$one_third = round($indexCount/3);
$two_third = $one_third+$one_third;
for($index=0; $index < $indexCount; $index++) {
    $ext = explode(".", $dirArray[$index]);
    $parsed_title = preg_replace ($patternB, "", $ext[0]);
    if ((substr("$dirArray[$index]", 0, 1) != ".")&&($ext[1] == "flv")){ // don't list hidden files
        $true_count++;
        print("<TR><TD><a href=\"$dirB$dirArray[$index]\">$parsed_title</a></td>");
        print("<td>");
        print(filesize($dirB.$dirArray[$index]));
        print("</td>");
        print("</TR>");
            if ($one_third == ($index+1) || $two_third == ($index+1)){
                print("</td></TR></table>");
                print("</TD><TD colspan=2><TABLE border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 class=whitelinks>");
            }
        $outputB .= "<ITEM>";
        $outputB .= "<file_path>/$dirB".htmlentities($dirArray[$index])."</file_path>";
        $outputB .= "<file_width>500</file_width>";
        $outputB .= "<file_height>375</file_height>";
        $outputB .= "<file_title>".$parsed_title."</file_title>";
        $outputB .= "<file_desc>Loaded from a seperate txt file, index to match with the index of the dir file</file_desc>";
        $outputB .= "<file_image>$thumbB</file_image>";
        $outputB .= "<featured_image>$thumbB</featured_image>";
        $outputB .= "<featured_or_not>true</featured_or_not>";
        $outputB .= "</ITEM>";
    }
}
print("</td></TR></table>");
print("</TR><td colspan=6 align=right>$true_count files</td></TABLE>");
};//if (file_exists($dirB))
$outputB .= "</CATEGORY>";
return $outputB;
};//function

then i take the final output of several function calls and pass it to the xml parser

//$output = concatoniated returns of several GenerateList functions $dom = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');

$element = $dom->createElement('CONTENT',$output);

$dom->appendChild($element);
  $xml_final = $dom->saveXML(); 
  $dom->save("playlist.xml") 

Answer 1

PHP isn't my thing but to get you on your way.

DOMDocument should have a method something like LoadXml.

So you need to put a bit more in your $output, ?xml tag and a root node etc, then create a DoMDocument and call LoadXml($output)

Or something similar any way.