RSS Works fine on my Development Server, not on my Live one.

Question

Ok, here's the specs:

Dev Server: Windows, WAMP, PHP 5+, Codeigniter

Live Server: Ubuntu Linux, PHP, CodeIgniter, LAMP

I get the following error in Firefox from my Live Server:

XML Parsing Error: junk after document element Location: http://www.mysite.com/feed/rss2/ Line Number 2, Column 1:

*syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in ...rss2.php*

HOWEVER, everything works like a beaut in Windows, in my Dev Environment.

Can anyone help me?

---

Here's the code:

function rss2() {
 @header("Content-Type: text/xml");
 $settings = $this->db_model->get_db_settings();

 $data['encoding'] = 'utf-8';
    $data["feed_name"] = $settings["sitename"];
 $data["feed_url"] = base_url() . "feed/rss2";
 $data["page_description"] = "RSS Feed for " . $settings["sitename"];
 $data["page_language"] = "en-us";
 $data["creator_email"] = "[email protected]";

 $data["todays_date"] = date("c");     

 //Array?
 $rssfeed = $this->blog_model->get_blog_posts_by_status("published");

 $i = 0;
 foreach ($rssfeed as $row) {
  //feed the details into the array
  $rss_data[$i]["title"] = $row["title"];
  $rss_data[$i]["permalink"] = base_url() . "content/blog/" . $row["slug"];
  $rss_data[$i]["date"] = $row["date"];
  $rss_data[$i]["description"] = utf8_encode(html_entity_decode($row["content"], ENT_QUOTES));   
  $rss_data[$i]["category"] = "No Category";
  $i=1;
 }

 if ($i == 0) {
  $data["rss_data"] = NULL;
 } else {
  $data["rss_data"] = $rss_data;
 }

 $this->load->view("system/feed/rss2", $data);

}

Answer 1

OK, Someone help me out if this is all wrong. I fixed the problem on the Live server, and it's still ok on the development one. The only thing I did was take out the first line in the xml document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Now the rss2.php file looks like this:

<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
    xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
    xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"&gt;
    <channel>
    <atom:link href="<?php echo base_url() . 'feed/rss2/'; ?>" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
    <title><?php echo $feed_name; ?></title>
    <link><?php echo $feed_url; ?></link>
    <description><?php echo $page_description; ?></description>
    <dc:language><?php echo $page_language; ?></dc:language>
    <dc:creator><?php echo $creator_email; ?></dc:creator>
    <dc:rights>Copyright <?php echo gmdate("Y", time()); ?></dc:rights>
    <dc:date><?php echo $todays_date; ?></dc:date>
    <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.codeigniter.com/" />

    <?php if ($rss_data == null) { ?>

     <item>
          <title>We're Sorry. There is no data to view.</title>
          <link><?php echo base_url(); ?></link>
          <guid><?php echo base_url(); ?>#When:<?php echo $todays_date; ?></guid>
          <description></description>
          <dc:subject></dc:subject>
          <dc:date><?php echo $todays_date; ?></dc:date>
        </item>

    <?php } else { ?>
    <?php foreach($rss_data as $row) { ?>

        <item>
          <title><?php echo xml_convert($row['title']); ?></title>
          <link><?php echo $row['permalink']; ?></link>
          <guid><?php echo $row['permalink']; ?>#When:<?php echo $row['date']; ?></guid>
          <description><?php echo xml_convert($row['description']); ?></description>
          <dc:subject><?php echo xml_convert($row['category']); ?></dc:subject>
          <dc:date><?php echo $row['date']; ?></dc:date>
        </item>

    <?php } } ?>

    </channel>
</rss>

Everything works like it should but is that correct? Shouldn't I have that encoding line? Let me know. Thanks in advance.

Answer 2

It sounds like the <? at the start of the XML declaration is misrecognised as a PHP code block, which the PHP interpreter then chokes on.

I seem to recall (though this might be quite wrong) that switching off short_open_tags support doesn't stop this problem.

The workaround is to emit the declaration from PHP itself, like so:

<?php echo( '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>' ); ?>