Google geocode error when processing accented characters

When tyring to geocode an address with french accents an error is generated.

" warning: simplexml_load_string() [function.simplexml-load-string]:
Entity: line 1: parser error : Input is not proper UTF-8 "

The error is in line Google.php line 107

$xml = simplexml_load_string( $string );

The can be fixed with a small function to remove accents.

A function to do this could be

function unaccent($text) {
static $search, $replace;
if (!$search) {
$search = $replace = array();
// Get the HTML entities table into an array
$trans = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
// Go through the entity mappings one-by-one
foreach ($trans as $literal => $entity) {
// Make sure we don't process any other characters
// such as fractions, quotes etc:
if (ord($literal) >= 192)

{ // Get the accented form of the letter $search[] = $literal; // Get e.g. 'E' from the string '&Eacute' $replace[] = $entity[1]; }

}
}
return str_replace($search, $replace, $text);
}

and line 107 would now be

$xml = simplexml_load_string( unaccent($string) );