How can whitespace or formatting errors in PHP code affect the output when trying to echo XML data?

Whitespace or formatting errors in PHP code can affect the output when trying to echo XML data because XML is sensitive to proper formatting. Extra spaces, tabs, or line breaks can cause parsing errors and result in invalid XML. To solve this issue, you can use output buffering in PHP to capture the XML data without any whitespace interference and then echo the clean XML data.

<?php
ob_start(); // Start output buffering

// XML data generation
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <item>Item 1</item>
  <item>Item 2</item>
</root>';

ob_clean(); // Clean output buffer
echo $xml; // Echo clean XML data