PHP JSON Handling
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. PHP has built-in functions to handle JSON.
1. Encoding JSON
The json_encode() function is used to convert a PHP array or object into a JSON string.
$age = array("Peter"=>35, "Ben"=>37, "Joe"=>43);
echo json_encode($age);
// Outputs: {"Peter":35,"Ben":37,"Joe":43}2. Decoding JSON
The json_decode() function is used to convert a JSON string into a PHP object or array.
Decoding to Object (Default)
$jsonobj = '{"Peter":35,"Ben":37,"Joe":43}';
$obj = json_decode($jsonobj);
echo $obj->Peter; // Outputs: 35Decoding to Associative Array
Pass true as the second parameter to return an associative array instead of an object.
$jsonobj = '{"Peter":35,"Ben":37,"Joe":43}';
$arr = json_decode($jsonobj, true);
echo $arr["Peter"]; // Outputs: 353. Handling Errors
You can use json_last_error() or json_last_error_msg() to check for errors during encoding or decoding.