Title: XMLRPC – Garbage Characters before <XML> node?? Last modified: August 19, 2016 --- # XMLRPC – Garbage Characters before node?? * [CE](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chrisemersonnc/) * (@chrisemersonnc) * [16 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/) * I know there are a bunch of XMLRPC threads. I’ve searched through 8 (pages) or so and haven’t seen anyone reporting this particular issue so here I am starting a new post. * I like many folks want to use Live Writer to make posts to my local wordpress server. But like many others my xmlrpc.php isn’t working correctly. * Here’s my problem simplified into a screenshot: [http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/2109/xmlrpcgarbage20090720m.png](http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/2109/xmlrpcgarbage20090720m.png)( Generated using [http://gggeek.raprap.it/debugger/](http://gggeek.raprap.it/debugger/)) * **For whatever reason, my xmlrpc.php file is including a few garbage characters before the node in xmlrpc’s response** (see screenshot). As you can see, the xmlrpc is reporting the right info – but the garbage characters are causing Live Writer to assume an invalid server response. * I have scoured the net for days for solutions and have tried many things including: – remove newlines from your .php files – disable all plugins – change your theme– include code in the xmlphp.php itself, etc * …But NONE of these things fixes my problem – the garbage characters won’t go away! * My system specs are in the screenshot but here they are in text format: * – IIS6/Win2k3 – FastCGI for IIS6 1.5 RC – PHP 5.3.0 – WordPress 2.8.2 * HUGE thanks in advance to anyone who can help at all! * – Chris * _PS: If there is already a thread about this feel free to move this post there for me.._ Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) * [Joseph Scott](https://wordpress.org/support/users/josephscott/) * (@josephscott) * [16 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149137) * These are probably a Byte Order Mark (BOM). Here’s a post that I found that describes this: * [http://www.jasonwoodcock.biz/2008/10/08/wordpress-a-byte-order-mark-found-in-utf-8-file-warning/](http://www.jasonwoodcock.biz/2008/10/08/wordpress-a-byte-order-mark-found-in-utf-8-file-warning/) * So either edit them out (very carefully) or you could try downloading a fresh copy of the xmlrpc.php file for 2.8.2 from Trac – [http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/2.8.2/xmlrpc.php?format=txt](http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/2.8.2/xmlrpc.php?format=txt) * Thread Starter [CE](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chrisemersonnc/) * (@chrisemersonnc) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149255) * Thank you for your suggesting Joseph. * I followed the instructions of the 1st link you posted and using the same Hex editor as in the link I removed the leading garbage (BOM) characters from *every* php/css file in the following locations: – WordPress root folder – wp-includes folder – my selected theme folder * At this point I re-tested with the XMLRPC debugger and noted that my garbage ( BOM) character count had gone from 9 to 3 – but not gone completely. [http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/7969/xmlrpcgarbage20090721.png](http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/7969/xmlrpcgarbage20090721.png) * Then I tried disabling all my plugins (rather than open all plugin php files in hex editor). I retested with the debugger and saw the following: [http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8953/xmlrpcgarbage20090721b.png](http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8953/xmlrpcgarbage20090721b.png) * Holy cow all the garbage (BOM) characters were gone! * At this point it was just a process of elimination to find which plugin was causing those 3 garbage (BOM) characters. It ended up being [AJAXed WordPress 1.28]. So I kept that plugin disabled and now my XMLRPC works perfect! * I have to say this was quite a tedious process and I sure hope something can be done in future to make it not so painful for people like me (Windows/IIS users?) to deal with. But in any case – a HUGE thank you to you Joseph! I love you man!! * – Chris * [emmadw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/emmadw/) * (@emmadw) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149256) * I’ve just found this thread & am trying to decide if I have the same problem, or another one. From what I can tell, most folks have the problem that Live Writer won’t even connect to the blog. Is that right? I’ve had no difficulties getting to the blog ( [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/291727?replies=3](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/291727?replies=3))– but I have had extraneous characters from the formatting (e.g. /p) creeping in. * I’ve tried disabling the plugins, but that didn’t work. * [Joseph Scott](https://wordpress.org/support/users/josephscott/) * (@josephscott) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149292) * [@chrisemersonnc](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chrisemersonnc/) – Good to hear you were able to pin it down to a plugin. What I suspect is that the plugin has one or more files with a BOM. That gets added to the every XML-RPC response and causes the breakage. Have you contacted the plugin author to let him know about what you found? * [@emmadw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/emmadw/) – If you are seeing stripped brackets from HTML then you probably have this- [http://josephscott.org/archives/2009/03/conclusion-of-libxml2-issues-use-php-529-libxml2-273/](http://josephscott.org/archives/2009/03/conclusion-of-libxml2-issues-use-php-529-libxml2-273/) There is a plugin to help work around this – [http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/](http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/) * The bottom line though is that your server is using a combination of PHP & libxml that is known to be broken. * Thread Starter [CE](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chrisemersonnc/) * (@chrisemersonnc) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149315) * Hrmm – I thought if I was using anything above php 5.2 I’d be safe from the “ bad combination” dilemma – guess I should go back and read those threads to confirm what versions I”m using. * Still can’t thank you enough Joseph – such a world of difference now being able to use Live Writer to post to the blog. * [Joseph Scott](https://wordpress.org/support/users/josephscott/) * (@josephscott) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149335) * All of the reports I’ve seen of BOM problems have been on Windows servers. Seems like a text editor on Windows will inject a BOM when editing files. I’m not yet sure what conditions trigger this. Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) The topic ‘XMLRPC – Garbage Characters before node??’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [garbage characters](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/garbage-characters/) * [xmlrpc](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/xmlrpc/) * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 6 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [Joseph Scott](https://wordpress.org/support/users/josephscott/) * Last activity: [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xmlrpc-garbage-characters-before-ltxmlgt-node/#post-1149335) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics