It looks like you are exploding (fragmenting) each element of your xml into a separate feature, rather than flattening them.

Like i said, i'm new to FME, so i'm not yet comfortable with the lingo. Does this photo help?

Ideally you could post a fragment of your xml structure, on the xml reader itself the parameters of interest are 'elements to match' and 'flatten options', but without knowing the structure of the xml it's hard to make recommendations.

What you want in your elements to match is simply "log"

What you want in your elements to match is simply "log"

The XML parser should parse XML documents regardless of whether it has indentations or not. I don't think that missing indentations causes the error.

According to the error message you have posted, there seems to be an invalid character in the line 43. I guess that the encoding declaration in the XML header may be missing or may not match the actual encoding of the XML documentation.

Check if the XML header (the first row of the document) matches the actual encoding.

everything matches. I have a degree symbol in line 43 (for both types of XML files), and it seems to not like it in the above "non-indented" XML file

Can you share a sample XML file that reproduces the error?

What you want in your elements to match is simply "log"

Awesome! It worked! thank you very much. There's only one more problem, sometimes the XML files are formated this way with no indenting:

When i run these files, i get the following errors;

Thanks for sharing the sample XML file.

The error is caused by that the XML document has been created with ANSI encoding (non-standard for XML), whereas the XML declaration doesn't contain a correct encoding attribute.

Try specifying the correct encoding explicitly in the XML declaration (the first row), as in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

or

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>

See also here: How XML deals with different character sets

What you want in your elements to match is simply "log"

I guess that the files you were able to read without error [1] don't contain any invalid characters like the degrees symbol fortunately, or [2] are created with UTF-8 encoding.

Anyway, for the files raising the error, a possible workaround is:

1. Use a Text File reader to read the entire document at once with specifying the correct encoding.
2. Change the encoding to UTF-8 (XML standard) with the AttributeEncoder.
3. Parse and flatten the XML with the XMLFragmenter.

I guess that the files you were able to read without error [1] don't contain any invalid characters like the degrees symbol fortunately, or [2] are created with UTF-8 encoding.

Anyway, for the files raising the error, a possible workaround is:

1. Use a Text File reader to read the entire document at once with specifying the correct encoding.
2. Change the encoding to UTF-8 (XML standard) with the AttributeEncoder.
3. Parse and flatten the XML with the XMLFragmenter.

This did not work either. It's odd because the other files have a degree symbol as well and it works just fine.

I guess that the files you were able to read without error [1] don't contain any invalid characters like the degrees symbol fortunately, or [2] are created with UTF-8 encoding.

Anyway, for the files raising the error, a possible workaround is:

1. Use a Text File reader to read the entire document at once with specifying the correct encoding.
2. Change the encoding to UTF-8 (XML standard) with the AttributeEncoder.
3. Parse and flatten the XML with the XMLFragmenter.