mifflin has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm using XML::Writer to build an xml file to load our IBM websphere commerce database. The xml spec I have to use uses attributes for all the data, so i cannot use any cdata to preserve data. The problem I'm having is that some of the data I have already has some entities in it. For exampe: the copy right symbol is in my description in my database as ±

When I send that data through XML:Writer the ampersand gets transformed in the data to ±

Is there any way to make XML::Writer leave exiting entities alone? Here is a sample of the code that I am using to create an entry in my xml that has the problem... 

      $upd_xml->emptyTag('catentdesc',
         catentry_id => iu_product_catentry($part, $pi),
         language_id => $properties{language_id}{"en_$cntryid"},
         name => $pi->{NEW_SHORTNAME},
         shortdescription => $pi->{NEW_SHORTNAME},
         longdescription => $pi->{NEW_LONGNAME},
         fullimage => $pi->{NEW_DETAIL_IMAGE},
         available => '0',
         published => ($pi->{NEW_ISRETIRED} or $pi->{NEW_ISINVISIBLE} 
+? '0' : '1'),
         keyword => $pi->{NEW_KEYWORDS});

[download]
Is there some 'feature' in XML::Writer that I am missing that can help me?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: XML::Writer entity transformation issue
by samtregar (Abbot) on Jan 20, 2006 at 20:43 UTC
    Are you sure you want to fix this behavior? Consider that if you do the system on the other end is going to have to deal with non-ASCII characters coming out of their XML parser. If your encoding is set right then everything should still work, but I wonder if you wouldn't be happier just leaving it the way it is. If, as I imagine, this text will one day end up in a web-broswer "±" may be preferable to its UTF-8 equivalent.

    All that said, if you want a better answer you might consider posting to the perl-xml mailing-list. Questions about XML encoding frequently get good answers there and the XML::Writer author has been known to post some of them.

    -sam

[reply]
Re: XML::Writer entity transformation issue
by mifflin (Curate) on Jan 20, 2006 at 19:59 UTC
    Here is some code to further illustrate 
    use XML::Writer;
use IO::File;
$fh = IO::File->new();
open($fh, '>', \$doc);
$xml = XML::Writer->new(DATA_MODE => 1, DATA_INDENT => 2, OUTPUT => $f
+h);
$xml->startTag('root');
$xml->emptyTag('elem', attr => '®');
$xml->endTag('root');
$xml->end;
print $doc;

    [download]
    This prints out... 
    <root>
  <elem attr="&amp;reg;" />
</root>

    [download]
    However, what I wanted was... 
    <root>
  <elem attr="&reg;" />
</root>

    [download]
    Is this possible with XML::Writer?
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: XML::Writer entity transformation issue
by nobull (Friar) on Jan 20, 2006 at 19:18 UTC
    Could I suggest you simply pass your data though an entity decoder?
[reply]
      I'm not sure what you mean by "Entity Decoder"
      Could you elaborate?
[reply]

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