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How to Fix garbled Characters When Parsing XML with xml_parser_create: Step-by-Step Guide

gitbox 2025-09-15 
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<p>echo <span><span class="hljs-string">"<p>When using PHP's <code>xml_parser_create
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This ensures the parser interprets the XML as UTF-8, avoiding garbled characters caused by default encoding.

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Step 3: Enable Entity Conversion

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If the XML contains special characters (like & < >), enable entity conversion:

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xml_parser_set_option(</span></span><span><span>$parser</span></span><span>, XML_OPTION_TARGET_ENCODING, 'UTF-8');<br>
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Step 4: Read File Content and Convert Encoding

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Before parsing, you can use PHP's file_get_contents to read the XML and then mb_convert_encoding to convert the encoding:

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</span></span><span><span>$xmlContent</span></span><span> = file_get_contents('example.xml');<br>
</span><span><span>$xmlContent</span></span><span> = mb_convert_encoding(</span><span><span>$xmlContent</span></span><span>, 'UTF-8', 'auto');<br>
xml_parse(</span><span><span>$parser</span></span><span>, </span><span><span>$xmlContent</span></span><span>, true);<br>
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Step 5: Free the Parser After Parsing

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After parsing, remember to free the parser:

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xml_parser_free(</span></span><span><span>$parser</span></span><span>);<br>
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Conclusion

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Garbled characters in XML are mainly caused by encoding mismatches. The core solutions are:

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  • Verify the encoding of the XML file.
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  • Specify encoding when creating the parser.
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  • Convert encoding when reading content if necessary.
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  • Set appropriate options for parsing special characters.
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By following these steps, you can effectively avoid garbled characters when parsing XML files using xml_parser_create.

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