Failed loading XML:xmlParseCharRef: invalid xmlChar value - php

Question

When I try to Import xml file, it returns an error:
xmlParseCharRef: invalid xmlChar value 4" because of $amp; in xml <STOCKGROUP >NAME="ABC & Glass" RESERVEDNAME="">
Here is code I'm using to read xml file data
function add_product_type()
{
print_r($_FILES);
if (isset($_FILES['product_type_file']) && ($_FILES['product_type_file']['error'] == UPLOAD_ERR_OK)) {
$use_errors = libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$response = simplexml_load_file($_FILES['product_type_file']['tmp_name']);
print_r($response);
foreach($response->BODY->IMPORTDATA as $key => $value) {
foreach($value->REQUESTDATA->TALLYMESSAGE as $key => $values) {
if (strstr("&", $values->STOCKGROUP->attributes())) {
$name = str_replace("&", "&", $values->STOCKGROUP->attributes());
}
else {
$name = $values->STOCKGROUP->attributes();
}
echo $name . ",";
}
}
if ($response == false) {
echo "Failed loading XML\n";
foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error) {
echo "\t", $error->message;
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

XML has no notion of HTML entities. As a hack, you can decode the entities first with
$html = html_entity_decode($file_contents, ENT_QUOTES, "utf-8");
and then try parse $html with the XML parser. Just hope it's tolerant enough, because HTML is still not valid XML.
The good news is that you can then remove the if (strstr("&", hack because that is taken care of by html_entity_decode().

Answer 2

Your XML sample isn't the same data as your getting the error with and processes OK, but this doesn't mean that your code is correct. In
your main loop, you use $values->STOCKGROUP->attributes() as the name, but if you did a print_r() of this value, you will see it comes out with a list of all of the attribute values and your code will combine them all into one string.
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[NAME] => Alluminium Section & Glass
[RESERVEDNAME] =>
)
)
If you just want the NAME attribute of <STOCKGROUP NAME="Alluminium Section & Glass" RESERVEDNAME="">, then use STOCKGROUP['NAME']. Also rather than just substitute &, use html_entity_decode() to convert any characters in the name.
foreach($response->BODY->IMPORTDATA as $key => $value) {
foreach($value->REQUESTDATA->TALLYMESSAGE as $key => $values) {
$name = html_entity_decode((string)$values->STOCKGROUP['NAME']);
echo $name . ",";
}
}
This code with the sample you provide outputs...
Alluminium Section & Glass,
Update:
Check the file being loaded...
$data = file_get_contents($_FILES['product_type_file']['tmp_name']);
echo $data;
$use_errors = libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$response = simplexml_load_string($data);
echo $response->asXML();