Non-UTF characters break RSS feed

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I have nasty issue occuring every so often where sometime a guest blogger would inadvertently put a non-UTF character or an unbalanced HTML tag into a post, which will then break the RSS feed and will result in FeedBurner not being able to send it to subscribers via email.

Is there a technological way to avoid this kind of issues?

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Thanks!

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2 comments

  1. copy this code in a php file, copy this file in your plugins-folder and after this activate it on the backend of WordPress. I hope this helps, but i dont test it, write it on scratch.

    <?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Non-UTF characters in RSS feed
 * Plugin URI:  http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/37845/non-utf-characters-break-rss-feed/
 * Description: Filter content for unicode characters
 * Version:  1.0.0
 * Author:      Frank Bültge
 * Author URI:  http://bueltge.de
 * License:     GPLv3
 */

// This file is not called from WordPress. We don't like that.
! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) and exit;

foreach ( array( 'the_content_rss', 'the_excerpt_rss', 'the_title_rss', 'comment_text_rss' ) as $filter )
    remove_filter( $filter, 'filter_non_utf8_chars', 0 );

function filter_non_utf8_chars( $content ) {

    return htmlentities2( $content );
}
?>

  2. If this is just happening in the RSS content area, try filtering out the chars by using the_content_rss filter:

    add_filter('the_content_rss', 'filter_non_utf8_chars', 0, 1);
function filter_non_utf8_chars($content){
    $content = preg_replace('/[^(x20-x7F)x0A]*/','', $content);
    return $content;
}

    Here are the filters related to RSS feeds:

    1. the_excerpt_rss
    2. the_content_rss
    3. the_title_rss
    4. comment_text_rss

    Hope this helps!