entity reference not defined

[thescientist]

so I'm trying to get some page's to validate, and there a couple of URL's being generated (from some API's I'm using on the site) that are throwing some validation errors.for example, for the Etsy API, this is a url that I'm getting back which is a link to one of my clients listings on the site.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/64163842/whispy-fumed-wine-stopper?utm_source=sandandfire&utm_medium=api&utm_campaign=api

and this is the kind of error's I'm getting

Line 36, column 155: general entity "utm_medium" not defined and no default entityLine 36, column 165: reference to entity "utm_medium" for which no system identifier could be generated

now this all being output with PHP, and so I tried urlencoding the URL on the server side which resolved the validation errors, but it turns my URL's into this, which break in the browser when clicked on.

http%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Flisting%2F64163842%2Fwhispy-fumed-wine-stopper%3Futm_source%3Dsandandfire%26utm_medium%3Dapi%26utm_campaign%3Dapi

for some reason in the view source it looks like that ^, but when I click on it, it pre-pends my localhost address to the URL, like so

http://localhost:8888/sandandfire/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Flisting%2F64163842%2Fwhispy-fumed-wine-stopper%3Futm_source%3Dsandandfire%26utm_medium%3Dapi%26utm_campaign%3Dapi

any thoughts?

[trevelluk]

Even inside a link URL then ampersands need to be escaped as &The htmlspecialchars() function is probably what you need.

[thescientist]

Even inside a link URL then ampersands need to be escaped as &The htmlspecialchars() function is probably what you need.

yeah, that's why I tried urlencoding. I'll give htmlspecialchars() a shot, that sounds like what I might need to you use instead. thanks for your time and feedback!

[thescientist]

Even inside a link URL then ampersands need to be escaped as &The htmlspecialchars() function is probably what you need.

awesome thanks! htmlspecialchars() was it.