i get a hyphen at the beginning of the json response php

[Abubaker_3]

hey every one thank you in advance
i have a jason resonse befofe the start of the json respone i get a hyphen like this
i have been stuck for a day here so any help is much appreciated

-{
    "responseCode": "",
    "responseStatus": "200",
    "responseMessege": "Success",
    "product": {
        "id": "60",
        "name": "Rolex Watch",
        "description": "Luxury watch.",
        "price": "25000",
        "category_id": "1",
        "category_name": "Fashion"
    }
}

the json encode part

if($product->name!=null){
    // create array
    $product_arr = array(
        "id" =>  $product->id,
        "name" => $product->name,
        "description" => $product->description,
        "price" => $product->price,
        "category_id" => $product->category_id,
        "category_name" => $product->category_name**Bold Text Here**

    );

    // set response code - 200 OK
    http_response_code(200);

    // make it json format
    echo json_encode(
        array(
        "responseCode"=>"",
        "responseStatus"=>"200",
        "responseMessege"=>"Success",
        "product"=>$product_arr));
}

[rproffitt]

Not something I'm familiar with but https://forum.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?99649-SOLVED-JSON-response-with-keys-that-contain-quot-quot-hyphen-character-ref-error looks to mention this along with why and a possible fix.

[Dani]

Is it possible that you are echo'ing a - somewhere earlier in your app, before your echo json_encode() statement? What does the full PHP script for that page look like? If you comment out the echo statement that begins on line 17 of the code you provided, does it still print out the dash?