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File Handling with PHP

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Reading JSON

6:25 with Alena Holligan

JSON is a very common format for sharing data on the web and many APIs respond with JSON. It's also a common format for configuration files. PHP has a handy function for turning JSON object into PHP objects and arrays.

Additional Parameters for json_decode

assoc – When TRUE, returned objects will be converted into associative arrays.

depth – User specified recursion depth.

options – Bitmask of JSON decode options. Currently there are two supported options. The first is JSON_BIGINT_AS_STRING that allows casting big integers to string instead of floats which is the default. The second option is JSON_OBJECT_AS_ARRAY that has the same effect as setting assoc to TRUE.

NOTE ON RETURN VALUES: Returns the value as the appropriate PHP type (object or array). Values true, false and null are returned as TRUE, FALSE and NULL respectively. NULL is returned if the json cannot be decoded or if the encoded data is deeper than the recursion limit.

Validating & Formatting JSON

The JSON Formatter was created to help with debugging JSON. As JSON data is often output without line breaks to save space, it is extremely difficult to actually read and make sense of it. This little tool attemps to solve the problem by formatting the JSON data so that it is easy to read and debug by human beings.

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    If you're going to build anything on the web, 0:00
    chances are you'll run into JSON data. 0:02
    You'll often receive a response in JSON when requesting data from an API. 0:05
    It's also a common format for configuration files. 0:10
    So what makes JSON so popular?. 0:14
    JSON is an easy way to encode structured data and 0:16
    transfer that data between systems. 0:20
    It has simple markup, and when formatted it's fairly easy for humans to read. 0:22
    It is also easily validated and 0:27
    transformed natively in most modern languages. 0:30
    JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation, but 0:34
    we don't need to write any JavaScript. 0:37
    PHP has a handy function for turning JSON objects into PHP objects and arrays. 0:39
    We can also turn an object or array from PHP into JSON. 0:46
    Let's give it a try, while I share some of my top programming books. 0:52
    Open bookstop.,php, again, 0:56
    I've started by showing the contents of the JSON file and also a sample book. 1:00
    Let's preview this in a browser. 1:05
    We can see that the JSON file is clean and easy to read with a collection of books. 1:10
    These books have different attributes that are clearly defined. 1:16
    And here's what the sample book looks like. 1:21
    Let's go back to work spaces and remove the file display and 1:23
    replace the sample book with the data from the JSON. 1:27
    The first thing we need to do is get the contents of the JSON file. 1:36
    Then we'll use the json_decode function to turn this into an object. 1:56
    We'll assign this to the variable books. 2:05
    Before I try to use the object I wanna make sure that it's actually set up like I 2:10
    expect. 2:14
    If is_object books 2:15
    collection. 2:21
    And books. 2:28
    Should be an array of objects. 2:31
    Now I can loop through each book and 2:36
    replace the sample book with the book properties. 2:38
    Now, let's take a look at this in the browser. 4:09
    The details that I want are there but some of the descriptions are just too long. 4:17
    I don't want to display more than 500 characters. 4:22
    The book description itself is a string, so 4:25
    we can interact with it just like any other string. 4:28
    Let's go back to work spaces. 4:31
    First, I wanna check if the string is less than 500 characters. 4:35
    Then I'll just show the whole description. 4:58
    Else I'm going to use substring. 5:02
    I want to start at the beginning, echo substring 5:06
    book book description. 5:13
    To start at the beginning, I use 0. 5:19
    Then for the endpoint I could just use 500, but 5:23
    it might cut off in the middle of the word. 5:27
    Instead I'll use the string position and look for 5:30
    the next space after 500 characters. 5:33
    And finally all in the line with three dots. 5:55
    Let's space this out a little bit. 6:02
    Now let's go back to the browser. 6:14
    Great, the books are much more uniform. 6:22

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