Access denied issue

[Bob Sweeney]

I am running MySQL Server version: 5.7.25-0ubuntu0.16.04.2 - (Ubuntu).

When I run this php script below with the CORRECT MySQL root user password entered I get the error:
Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

However if I change the root user to an INCORRECT value I get the MySQL error:
Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

I know the MySQL root user password I'm entering is correct because I can log into both the mysql command line and phpmyadmin with it.

So the CORRECT password when received by MySQL is returning access denied using password NO but I don't understand why it would do that. Any help is much appreciated.


<?php
$dbusername = "root";
$dbpassword = "password";
$dbname = "JMDB";
$dbtable = "JM_songs";

$con=mysqli_connect("localhost",$dbusername,$dbpassword,$dbname);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo " " . mysqli_connect_error();
}

?>