XML output via PHP

1

I hope someone can help me out, with this.

I am getting data from a MySql database via php and outputting it into xml.

Here is my code:

<? 
 
include("connect.php");
 
header("Content-type: text/xml"); 
 
$linkID = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) or die("Could not connect to host."); 
mysql_select_db($database, $linkID) or die("Could not find database."); 
 
$query = "SELECT head_entry, text_entry, DATE_FORMAT(add_date, '%d %b %Y, %H:%i') as vtime FROM newsbox WHERE active = 'y' ORDER BY add_date DESC"; 
$result = mysql_query($query, $linkID) or die("Data not found."); 
 
$xml_output = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"iso-8859-1\"?>
"; 
$xml_output .= "<menu>
"; 
 
for ($x = 0; $x < mysql_num_rows($result) ; $x++){ 
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result); 
 
$xml_output .= "	<item head =\"" . "&lt;b&gt;" . $row['head_entry'] . "&lt;/b&gt;" . "\" entry =\"" . $row['text_entry'] . "\" date =\"" . $row['vtime'] . "\" >
"; 
 
$xml_output .= "	</item>
"; 
} 
 
$xml_output .= "</menu>"; 
 
print $xml_output; 
 
?>

My problem is that i need to have links, bold and italic in there. How would i get php to detect <b></b>, <i></i>, <a href=></a> and change it so xml can understand it and output the result correctly.

Would i have to use CDATA and if so, how???

Cheers

Lee