Convert a JSON string to array in PHP

This article demonstrates how to convert a JSON string to an array in PHP.

The standard solution to decode a JSON string is to use the json_decode() function, which takes an JSON encoded string and converts it into an appropriate PHP type. The following code snippet shows how to use json_decode() to convert a JSON string into an object. Note that elements within an object are accessed by encapsulating the element within braces and the apostrophe.

<?php

$json_str = '{"x":5,"y":6}';

$obj = json_decode($json_str);

print '(' . $obj->{'x'} . ', ' . $obj->{'y'} . ')';

Output: (5, 6)

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If you want the json_decode() function to return an associative array instead of an object, you can set its second parameter to true. The second parameter is optional and is false by default; you have to set it to true to convert the JSON objects into associative arrays. For example,

<?php

$json_str = '{"x":5,"y":6}';

$obj = json_decode($json_str, true);

var_export($obj);

Output:

array (

'x' => 5,

'y' => 6,

)

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If your JSON string is encoded using the htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() function, you might want to decode the HTML entities back to their corresponding characters before invoking json_decode(). This can be done using the html_entity_decode() function, as shown below:

<?php

$json_str = '{"x":5,"y":6}';

$decoded_str = html_entity_decode($json_str);

$obj = json_decode($decoded_str, true);

var_export($obj);

Output:

array (

'x' => 5,

'y' => 6,

)

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That’s all about converting a JSON string to an array in PHP.

Convert a JSON string to array in PHP

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