XMLRPC – Garbage Characters before <XML> node??

These are probably a Byte Order Mark (BOM). Here’s a post that I found that describes this:

https://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 – https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/browser/tags/2.8.2/xmlrpc.php?format=txt

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.
https://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:
https://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

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 ( https://www.ads-software.com/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.

@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-
https://josephscott.org/archives/2009/03/conclusion-of-libxml2-issues-use-php-529-libxml2-273/
There is a plugin to help work around this –
https://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.

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.

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.