Posted by Norbert Wenzel on 12/15/05 01:58

I did some easy xml parsing on the last.fm[1] recent tracklist.
I do read in all the tracks and output them encoded with htmlentities().

A lot of german special chars like the Ä (Ä) are transfered to
strange followings of an A with any sort of available accent. But it
isn't replaced by Ä

The xml file does not contain any character encoding information, so how
could I tell htmlentities(), there might be some character in the
string, which might be a german special char.

I never encountered any problems when writing htmlentities('Ähre'); or
$var = 'Ähre';
htmlentities($var);
but only if I take the strings out of the xml file.

If I output the whole xml file all characters are shown as they are
supposed to, only if i do the encoding by htmlentities() I get those
weird accented letters.

any suggestions how to fix this?

thanks,
Norbert

PS: code and link to the output page can be given if needed.

[1] www.last.fm

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