This tutorial will help you learn PHP JSON. Let's first see what PHP JSON is.
JSON is the acronym for JavaScript Object Notation. It is a syntax to store and exchange data.
The JSON format is text-based and can be easily sent to and from a server. Therefore, it can be used as a data format by any programming language.
PHP includes built-in functions for handling JSON. Let's first consider the following two functions:
This function can be used for encoding a value to JSON format.
Example:
<?php
$age = array("Peter"=>35, "Ben"=>37, "Joe"=>43);
echo json_encode($age);
?>
You can use the json_decode() function for decoding a JSON object into a PHP object or an associative array.
<?php
$jsonobj = '{"Peter":35,"Ben":37,"Joe":43}';
var_dump(json_decode($jsonobj));
?>An object is returned by default by the json_decode() function. This function has a second parameter, and when it is set to true, it decodes the JSON objects into associative arrays.
With a foreach() loop, you can loop through the values.
<?php
$jsonobj = '{"Peter":35,"Ben":37,"Joe":43}';
$obj = json_decode($jsonobj);
foreach($obj as $key => $value) {
echo $key . " => " . $value . "<br>";
}
?>