display xml friendly special characters

[lorddemos90]

I've managed to create a dynamic xml document in php that pulls information from a database.  The problem is, some of the items in the database have "&" and other non-xml friendly characters in them.  How can I add code into my program so that will display the characters as xml friendly?

Here is my code:

<? header('Content-type: text/xml'); ?>
<?php
// display RSS 2.0 channel information
ECHO <<<END
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
      <title>RSS Title</title>
      <link>http://www.rsswebsite.com</link>
      <description>RSS Description</description>
      <language>en-us</language>
      <generator>PHP/$phpversion</generator>
END;


?>
<?php require_once('Connections/conn_customers.php'); ?>
<?php
if (!function_exists("GetSQLValueString")) {
function GetSQLValueString($theValue, $theType, $theDefinedValue = "", $theNotDefinedValue = "")
{
  $theValue = get_magic_quotes_gpc() ? stripslashes($theValue) : $theValue;

  $theValue = function_exists("mysql_real_escape_string") ? mysql_real_escape_string($theValue) : mysql_escape_string($theValue);

  switch ($theType) {
    case "text":
      $theValue = ($theValue != "") ? "'" . $theValue . "'" : "NULL";
      break;   
    case "long":
    case "int":
      $theValue = ($theValue != "") ? intval($theValue) : "NULL";
      break;
    case "double":
      $theValue = ($theValue != "") ? "'" . doubleval($theValue) . "'" : "NULL";
      break;
    case "date":
      $theValue = ($theValue != "") ? "'" . $theValue . "'" : "NULL";
      break;
    case "defined":
      $theValue = ($theValue != "") ? $theDefinedValue : $theNotDefinedValue;
      break;
  }
  return $theValue;
}
}

mysql_select_db($database_conn_customers, $conn_customers);
$query_Recordset1 = "SELECT * FROM customers ORDER BY Contact ASC";
$Recordset1 = mysql_query($query_Recordset1, $conn_customers) or die(mysql_error());
$row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1);
$totalRows_Recordset1 = mysql_num_rows($Recordset1);
?>


<?php



// display and loop each item.
do {
$title = $row_Recordset1['Contact Title'];
$fname = $row_Recordset1['Contact'];
$company = $row_Recordset1['Company'];

ECHO <<<END

  <item>
    <title>$title</title>
<name>$fname</name>
    <company>$company</company>
    <description>$mydescription...</description>
    <pubDate>$pubDate</pubDate>
  </item>

END;
} while ($row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1));





// Display end of RSS file data
ECHO <<<END
    </channel>
</rss>

END;


mysql_free_result($Recordset1);
?>