Question

I have the following php code that runs after validation:

try {

    if (isset($filtered) && !isset($errors)){
        $p['email']=$filtered['email'];

        # check if email exists
        if ($user->userExists($p)){
            $msg['error'] = false;
            $msg['msg'] = 'This email address is already in our database';
        } else {
            # insert user data into database
            $user->saveUser($filtered);
            $msg['error'] = false;
            $msg['msg'] = 'Successful! Go back to our homepage.';
        }
    } else {
        # echo errors back
        foreach ($errors as $value) {
            $msg['error'] = true;
            $msg['msg'] = $value;
        }
    }

I prepare the json data as follows:

        # header encode
        header('Content-type: application/json');
        # return json encoded data
        echo $encoded = json_encode($msg);

A direct array like this one below works fine.

header('Content-type: application/json');
$msg['error'] = true;
$msg['msg'] = 'Please enter an email address.';
echo $encoded = json_encode($msg);

I can’t seem to figure out what the problem with my php logic could be. Kindly help.

Answer 1

The only difference I can see there is that in the version that works, you call header() before anything else.

Try moving

header('Content-type: application/json');

above the try/catch. I have a suspicion that the reason you are getting this problem is because you are implicitly accessing the array $msg before you have created it, which throws an E_NOTICE (or it might be E_STRICT, I can’t remember) and causes something to be written to the output buffer, so the headers are sent, and you can no longer manipulate them – although if this were the case I would expect it to break your JSON as well…

Regardless, try the above and report back.