Strange output when fetching order data

Question

I am trying to integrate my store (community edition 1.9) with ShipWorks.

I have followed the instructions on both ends and for the most part everything is working as it should. However when I try to download the order data into Shipworks. I get an error that basically says there is something in this file (xml) that should not be there. After a lot of back and forth with both ShipWorks and my hosting company I have narrowed the problem down to an extraneous character that is showing up in the xml, when viewed with notepad ++ it looks like a very small superscript asterisk.

I have further narrowed the issue and discovered that this character appears when ever the code: $orders = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->getCollection();`

is called. I have tried looking at the Mage.php file to see if I can further deduce the problem but I am not entirely sure what to look for and don't want to start messing with core files.

Can anyone tell me whats happening/how to fix it?

Answer 1

There's a couple of things I'd try:

1. Look at the shipworks.php (or shipworks3.php, whatever they call their bridge now) to ensure that there's not some extra character at the top of the file before the <?php

2. Since you're saying that this character shows up every time the getCollection is called then you probably have an extra character in there too. You could re-download the exact version of Magento that you're running and overwrite the app/code/core/Mage folder (the goal being to replace all of the files with original Core files). Backup first!