Search code examples
phpxmlsimplexml

Problem with simpleXML and entity not being defined

I'm trying to parse a XML file, but when loading it simpleXML prints the following warning:

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: gpr_545.xml:55: parser error : Entity 'Oslash' not defined in import.php on line 35

This is that line:

<forenames>B&Oslash;IE</forenames><x> </x>

As it is a warning, I might ignore it, but I'd like to understand what is happening.

Solution

  • HTML Encoding of Latin1 characters (like Ø, what that character describes) is what has broken the XML parser. If you're in control of the data, you need to escape it using XML style character encoding (Ø just happens to be & #216;)