In php, Prepare string and create XML/RSS Feed

Question

I want to create my own RSS/XML feed. I fetch data from the database to display, but keep getting invalid character errors. If the string has an ampersand or other strange characters in it, the XML will be invalid.

I tried using urlencode and htmlentities, but these don't capture all possible characters which need to be escaped. Does anyone know of a PHP function which will prepare a string for XML output?

Answer 1

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2601699/using-php-script-to-fill-in-xml/2602138#2602138

Answer 2

htmlspecialchars should be enough. But don't forget to set the 3rd parameter (charset) to the character set matching the string charset.

Answer 3

For example:

function html_special_chars($str)
{
     return preg_replace(array('/&/', '/"/'), array('&', '"'), $str);
}