# Recovering in Ruby-libxml parser from invalid UTF8 code **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 3, 2009, 3:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recovering-in-ruby-libxml-parser-from-invalid-utf8-code/164614 "2009-04-03T03:47:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jeffrey_LSTaylor)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2009, 3:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recovering-in-ruby-libxml-parser-from-invalid-utf8-code/164614/1 "2009-04-03T03:47:34Z")
I am parsing XML streams with ruby-libxml using the XML::Reader class. Several have invalid UTF-8 characters. I need a tutorial or at least some hints on how to recover and continue the parsing. TIA, Jeffrey ---
**Author:** ![Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jeffrey_LSTaylor)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2009, 4:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recovering-in-ruby-libxml-parser-from-invalid-utf8-code/164614/2 "2009-04-03T04:14:29Z")
Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote: > I am parsing XML streams with ruby-libxml using the XML::Reader class. > Several have invalid UTF-8 characters. I need a tutorial or at least some > hints on how to recover and continue the parsing. Why not scrub them with Ruby’s built-in iconv first? And what are they doing to you and ruby-libxml? I have found libxml2 suspiciously forgiving, so far… ---
**Author:** ![Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@Jeffrey\_LSTaylor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jeffrey_LSTaylor)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2009, 4:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recovering-in-ruby-libxml-parser-from-invalid-utf8-code/164614/3 "2009-04-03T04:26:11Z")
Quoting P. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > Throws an exception. It took a bunch of digging to find line: 835, character: 418 is truely not an UTF-8 character (octal 240, maybe a Latin-1 character?). I’d like to delete or replace it with a question mark and continue parsing. It is a rather large file so I’d rather not read the whole thing into memory to correct. I suppose I could wrap the read function in a clean up function. Messy trying to keep state for UTF-8 across partial reads. I was hoping for something better. Jeffrey