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1. chrisemersonnc
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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
   (Generated using http://gggeek.raprap.it/debugger/)

   For whatever reason, my xmlrpc.php file is including a few garbage characters before the <XML> 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..

2. josephscott
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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/

   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

3. chrisemersonnc
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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

   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

   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

4. Emmadw
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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 ) - 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.

5. josephscott
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   @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 -
   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/
   There is a plugin to help work around this -
   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.

6. chrisemersonnc
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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.

7. josephscott
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   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.

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