XML error (Invalid Character) when retrieving results with NuSOAP

nusoap, php, xml

Solution

After searching and testing seems that a hack by CAZypedia crew was the solution:

function nusoap_parser($xml,$encoding='UTF-8',$method='',$decode_utf8=true){
    parent::nusoap_base();

    // Hack by CAZypedia crew to fix character encoding of NCBI XML data from SOAP
    // This prevents non-English characters from causing the parser to choke.
    $xml = iconv("ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8//TRANSLIT", $xml);
    // End hack.
    $this->xml = $xml;
    $this->xml_encoding = $encoding;
    $this->method = $method;
    $this->decode_utf8 = $decode_utf8;

Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nusoap/forums/forum/193579/topic/3718945

Problem

I'm using NuSOAP to interact with a third party API, including running database queries and retrieving the results. It's been working quite reliably, but I just ran into an issue with one specific query. Instead of returning results, NuSOAP generated an error: `XML error parsing SOAP payload on line 2: Invalid character` Turns out that the result set contained the following: `Léa Lincoln`. When I manually changed the accented character to a "regular" one, the query worked fine with no errors from NuSOAP. So, my question is how to handle this going forward. I can't control the data coming from the database, and I need for NuSOAP not to throw an error and stop every time there's a non-standard character. Thanks. --Jeff

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