4 Mar 2009 @ 2:38pm : Conclusion of libxml2 Issues – Use PHP 5.2.9 & libxml2 2.7.3
17 Mar 2009 @ 3:05pm : WordPress & libxml2 Episode IV: A New Plugin
At the end of December I detailed problems people were seeing with WordPress, XML-RPC and libxml2. I’ve got good news, both PHP and libxml2 have been updated to fix the issue. You can send your many thanks to Rob Richards who addressed this a couple of weeks ago with updates to ext/xml (PHP) and libxml2.
You’ll need version 2.7.3 or higher of libxml2 and 5.2.9 (not released yet) of PHP. I’ve tried this out on a system that had libxml2 2.7.1 with known problems and then upgraded it to 2.7.3 and a nightly build of PHP. I’m not sure if we’ll see 5.3 or 5.2.9 as the next PHP release, so I tested snapshots from both branches with libxml2 2.7.3 and confirmed that they both work.
After this all started there were a few patches making the rounds that basically changed the encoding for the HTML entities that were having problems. I’ve done some light testing of those for the XML-RPC case and found that they do appear to work. I’m not sure yet about adding that to WordPress, especially now that we’ve got viable fixes at the PHP and libxml2 level. I think if we see a PHP release soon that includes this fix then it’s best to encourage people to upgrade to address the problem.