how do you skip errored lines in xml when using php? - php

Question

I'm making a anime search using PHP and the myanimelist API. The issue I am having is, every once and awhile I'll search for something and it will come up with a bunch of XML errors. Which is fine but it won't display the information here is the code.
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
$search = $_GET['q'];
$username = '';
$password = '';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://myanimelist.net/api/anime/search.xml?q=$search");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD,$username . ":" . $password);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 'Magic Browser');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10 );
$data = curl_exec($ch);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($data);
$image = $xml->entry[0]->image;
$title = $xml->entry[0]->title;
$status = $xml->entry[0]->status;
$synopsis = $xml->entry[0]->synopsis;
echo "$image <br><br><b>Title</b>: $title <br> <b>Status</b>: $status <br><b>Synopsis</b>: $synopsis";
?>
EDIT FIXED
<?php
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
$search = $_GET['q'];
$username = '';
$password = '';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://myanimelist.net/api/anime/search.xml?q=$search");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD,$username . ":" . $password);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 'Magic Browser');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10 );
$data = curl_exec($ch);
//changed the encoding I don't know if it helped
$data = str_replace('utf-8', 'iso-8859-1', $data);
//replaced — so now it works
$data = str_replace('—', ' ', $data);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($data);
$image = $xml->entry[0]->image;
$title = $xml->entry[0]->title;
$status = $xml->entry[0]->status;
$synopsis = $xml->entry[0]->synopsis;
echo "$image <br><br><b>Title</b>: $title <br> <b>Status</b>: $status <br><b>Synopsis</b>: $synopsis";
?>
The example of what I mean is located here. http://vs3.yuribot.com/mal.php?q=naruto
it took awhile but now its fixed i commented the places that help fix it. Thank you everyone for your help.

Answer 1

You should check if simplexml_load_string returned false if the call failed (remote server not available) and if there is some sort of error message in the XML. If there are, you should skip the info and display the error instead. I can't tell you how they are hidden in the XML, but there is most likely a tag or something similar.
Edit: Just saw in the PHP docs that simplexml_load_string requires a well formed XML string. Maybe you should check if you really got a well-formed XML. Best is you look at the docs and change the code in the way you need.

Answer 2

If you are concerned with the PHP "Notice" or "Warning" messages that sometimes seem to appear on your example, then you can prefix the relevant function call (in this case, "simplexml_load_string") with the "#" symbol to suppress any such messages.
For example:
$xml = #simplexml_load_string($data);
For more information, see PHP's manual for error control.