PHP Custom Session Handler

Question

I use session_set_save_handler in a custom session class to use database storage. I have used database session storage for over a year. This has always worked fine and so has the captcha code that I wrote also almost a year ago. Problem I am having now is that the captcha code is no longer outputting the image. If I remove the require_once to the session class the image is outputted but the code is saved as if using session_start alone and not with the custom class. If I require the session class the image is not shown but the code is written as expected. I have used the same code for almost a year with no problems. I am at a total loss as to what is going on.

<?php

require_once('database.php');
require_once('config.php');

class FileSessionHandler
{

private $database;
private $life_time;

public function FileSessionHandler(){

$this->life_time = get_cfg_var("session.gc_maxlifetime");
$this->database = new database();
$this->database->newConnection        (db_host,db_users_name,db_users_pass,db_users_prefix . db_users);

session_set_save_handler(
array(&$this,'open'),
array(&$this,'close'),
array(&$this,'read'),
array(&$this,'write'),
array(&$this,'destroy'),
array(&$this,'gc')
);

register_shutdown_function('session_write_close');
session_start();

}


function open($savePath,$sessionName){
    return TRUE;
}
function close(){
    return TRUE;
}


function read($id){
    $data = "";
    $time = time();
    $newid =  $this->database->sanitizeData($id);
    $sql = "SELECT `session_data` FROM `" . tb_site_sessions . "` 
            WHERE `session_id`='{$newid}' AND `expires`>{$time}";

    $this->database->executeQuery($sql);    

    if($this->database->numRows() > 0) {
        $row = $this->database->getRows();
        $data = $row['session_data'];
    }

    return $data;
}


function write($id,$data){

$newid = $this->database->sanitizeData($id);
$newdata = $this->database->sanitizeData($data);
$time = time() + $this->life_time;

$sql = "INSERT INTO `" . tb_site_sessions . "`    
              (`session_id`,`session_data`,`expires`) 
        VALUES('{$newid}','{$newdata}',{$time}) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE 
             session_data='{$newdata}',expires={$time}";

$this->database->executeQuery($sql);

return TRUE;

 }


function destroy($id){

$newid = $this->database->sanitizeData($id);
$sql = "DELETE FROM `" . tb_site_sessions . "` WHERE `session_id`='{$newid}'";
$this->database->executeQuery($sql);

return TRUE;

}


function gc($maxlifetime){
$time = time();

$sql = "DELETE FROM `" . tb_site_sessions . "` WHERE `expires`<'{$time}'";
$this->database->executeQuery($sql);

return TRUE;
}

}



?>

method of calling:

require_once('site-sessions.php');
$handler = new FileSessionHandler();

image headers:

 header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
 header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . "GMT");
 header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
 header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
 header("Pragma: no-cache");

Answer 1

Found the problem and it was simple. In the config file there was a blank line before the php tag. The blank line was messing with the headers and session calling. I didn't even think about looking in the config file since it hadn't been altered in a while. Just including the answer in case anyone else comes across a similar situation.