Data not saved properly into XML file - php

Question

I am trying to save data to a XML file.
if (isset( $_POST['submit'])) {
$name = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['name']);
$xml = new DOMDocument("1.0", "ISO-8859-1");
$xml->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$xml->load('/var/www/Report/file.xml');
$element = $xml->getElementsByTagName('entries');
$newItem = $xml->createElement('reports');
$newItem->appendChild($xml->createElement('timestamp', date("F j, Y, g:i a",time())));
$newItem->appendChild($xml->createElement('name', $name));
$element -> item(0) -> appendChild($newItem);
$xml->formatOutput = true; // this adds spaces, new lines and makes the XML more readable format.
$xmlString = $xml->saveXML(); // $xmlString contains the entire String
$xml->save('/var/www/Report/file.xml');
}
Anytime I use mysql_real_escape_string() to escapes special characters in my string or try to to sanitize my data, my XML file looks like something in the image below.
I don't understand why the name start tag is missing in my XML file and why my data $name isn't saved into the XML file either. How could I to fix this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

1) Firefox does not show the xml byte-by-byte, rather it formats it itself. Therefore empty elements appear with only one self closing tag, no matter how they appear in the xml source. If you want to see the exact xml output, then open it in a text editor.
2) mysql_real_escape_string escapes characters that are problematic for mysql, not for XML: for example it does not escape '<'. Instead it, you should use DOMDocument::createTextNode. So instead of
$newItem->appendChild($xml->createElement('name', $name));
use
$nameElement = $xml->createElement('name');
$nameElement->appendChild( $xml->createTextNode($name) );
$newItem->appendChild($nameElement);
3) As you see, the $name is empty, but I don't know what can be the problem with your POST data seeing only this code, maybe there is no <input name='name' /> in your form: I sometimes accidentally set an id attribute to inputs instead of the name attribute.