simplexml_load_file from file not ending with .xml - php

Question

I'm trying to parse an xml file by starting with simplexml_load_file to load the contents. The file comes from a wordpress using an xml feed generated by a .php file.
The problem is it never can load the xml file..I'm not sure what I can do to make this work. Here is the code
<?php
$url = "http://marshallmashup.usc.edu/feed.php";
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$rss = simplexml_load_string($result);
if( ! $rss = simplexml_load_file($url,NULL, LIBXML_NOERROR | LIBXML_NOWARNING) )
{
echo 'unable to load XML file';
}
else
{
echo 'XML file loaded successfully';
}
?>

Answer 1

First of all after this line:
$result = curl_exec($ch);
you should add this one:
$result = utf8_encode($result);
Said that, you'll have no problems with the function simplexml_load_string($result); which will correctly create a DOM based on the string you give to the function and that is the feed gotten from the php page. You can see the result using var_dump($rss); after the statement $rss = simplexml_load_string($result);.