Extra space/indent prepended to string being printed from php - php

Question

I'm working on a REST api that people can download and throw on their server and use with little to no programming knowledge. https://github.com/evanstoddard/REST-Easy.
I'm using ajax for the setup page and php returns a string for ajax to see and decide whether to move on to the next step or tell the user to fix an error. It seemed to be working fine and then all of a sudden it won't go past the first step.
In my javascript I have the return value from php printed in my log. The first step is for the user to enter mysql server information such as the server url, username, and password. If a connection is created 'success' is returned. I appear to be getting ' success'. With a space or indent in there.
I commented out a lot of code I was working on before this error had occurred and the error is still there. I also added an extra indentation to my if block to check the return and the script succeeded so somewhere an extra bit is being added.
I don't really want to post my code here because there is A LOT of it and there are a bunch of moving parts which probably isn't the best way to go.
Here's a quick rundown of how this works:
User input(html form)->ajax->data handling php script->class_database.php(prints success->ajax->html
Applicable code:
Html:
<form onsubmit="stepTwo('#stepOneForm'); return false;" id="stepOneForm">
<input type="hidden" name="task" value="1" />
<input type="text" class="inputText" id="serverURL" name="serverURL" placeholder="MySQL Server:" /><br />
<input type="text" class="inputText" id="serverUsername" name="serverUsername" placeholder="Username:" /><br />
<input type="text" class="inputText" id="serverPassword" name="serverPassword" placeholder="Password:" /><br />
<input type="submit" class="blueButton" value="Connect" />
</form>
Javascript(AJAX):
function setupForm(form){
//console.log('Form function called.');
var formData = $(form).serialize();
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "data/data_setup.php",
data: formData,
success: function(result) {
console.log(result)
function showAndTell(hide, show){
$(show).slideDown(600);
$(hide).delay(300).slideUp(600);
}
function showMessage(message, type, holdMessage){
var messageContainer = "#messageContainer";
var messageText = "#messageText";
var messageImage = "#messageImage";
var errorImage = "<img src='images/error.png' alt='Error' height='60px' width='60px' />";
var successImage = "<img src='images/success.png' alt='Error' height='60px' width='60px' />";
if (type === 'error'){
$(messageText).empty()
$(messageImage).empty()
$(messageText).append(message)
$(messageImage).append(errorImage)
$(messageContainer).slideDown(500)
if (!holdMessage) {
$(messageContainer).delay(7000).slideUp(500)
}
}
else if(type === 'success'){
$(messageText).empty()
$(messageImage).empty()
$(messageText).append(message)
$(messageImage).append(successImage)
$(messageContainer).slideDown(500)
if (!holdMessage) {
$(messageContainer).delay(7000).slideUp(500)
}
}
}
if(result === 'success'){
showAndTell('#stepOne', '#stepTwo');
showMessage('Successfully connected to MySQL database.', 'success');
}
else if (result === 'badaccess') {
showMessage('Unsuccessful. Please recheck information.', 'error');
}
else if (result === 'nserver') {
showMessage('Please enter a server URL.', 'error');
$('#serverURL').css('background', '#ffdadb');
}
else if (result === 'nserverusername') {
showMessage('Please enter a server username.', 'error');
$('#serverUsername').css('background', '#ffdadb');
}
else if (result === 'ndatabase') {
showMessage('No database with that name. Create it? Yes | No', 'error', true);
}
else if (result === 'database') {
showMessage('Successfully connected to that database.');
showAndTell('#stepTwo', '#stepThree');
}
else {
showMessage('Unknown error. Please try again later.', 'error');
}
}
});
}
PHP data handling script:
<?php
//Include rest class
require_once('../../classes/class_rest.php');
//Get variables
$task = $_POST['task'];
$database_server = $_POST['serverURL'];
$database_username = $_POST['serverUsername'];
$database_password = $_POST['serverPassword'];
$rest_name = $_POST['restName'];
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$confPassword = $_POST['confirm'];
$emailAddress = $_POST['emailAddress'];
$api_name = $_POST['apiName'];
$database_name = $_POST['databaseName'];
$table_prefix = $_POST['tablePrefix'];
if ($task == 1){
if($database_server == ''){
print('nserver');
}
else if($database_username == ''){
print('nserverusername');
}
else{
connectSQL($database_server, $database_username, $database_password);
}
}
else if ($task == 2){
if($rest_name == ''){
print('nrest');
}
else{
databaseDoesExist($rest_name);
}
}
else if ($task == 3){
if($username == ''){
print('nuser');
die();
}
if($emailAddress == ''){
print('nemail');
die();
}
if(!$confPassword == $password){
print('nconf');
die();
}
insertUser($username, $emailAddress, $password);
}
else if ($task == 4){
}
else if ($task == 5){
}
else if ($task == 6){
}
else if($task == 9){
createInitialDatabase();
}
else if($task == 10){
createConfigFile();
}
?>
Function in class_database.php:
//Validates sql information
function connectSQL($server, $username, $password){
//Create sql connection
$con = mysqli_connect($server, $username, $password);
//Checks if connection was successful
if (mysqli_connect_errno($con)){
//Print 'badaccess' for ajax
print('badaccess');
}
//Run if connection successful
else{
//Print 'success' for ajax
print('success');
//Adds session variables for other sql commands later on
$_SESSION['server'] = $server;
$_SESSION['username'] = $username;
$_SESSION['password'] = $password;
}
}

Answer 1

Few comments to your handling script:
* make sure there's no white space before the opening <?php and as well, nothing after the trailing ?> which, btw, can be omitted as well (did you know?).
* what about so called BOM in case of UTF-8 codified source codes? You may wanna choose an editor or editor setting that doesn't write BOM at the beginning of UTF files.
* instead of, print('badaccess'); you might use die('badaccess'); – it will print the argument and stop the script execution.
* at require_once (and directives alike) it's recommended to omit the parenthesis
* consider rewriting long if...else statement dealing with $task to one switch().

Answer 2

it's easy to unintentionally leak a space from php code (space before in any included file), try ob_start() at the begining of "PHP data handling script" and ob_end_clean() just before "print('success')" at connectSql

Answer 3

After the ?> in one of my classes, there was an indent and that's what was causing my problems... programming sucks sometimes.