John Davidson

Message:

This is intended to be a general reference question and answer covering many of the never-ending "How do I access data in my JSON?" questions. It is here to handle the broad basics of decoding JSON in PHP and accessing the results.

I have the JSON:

{

    "type": "donut",

    "name": "Cake",

    "toppings": [

        { "id": "5002", "type": "Glazed" },

        { "id": "5006", "type": "Chocolate with Sprinkles" },

        { "id": "5004", "type": "Maple" }

    ]

}

How do I decode this in PHP and access the resulting data?

---

My Answer:
To decode the JSON in PHP and access the resulting data, you can use the `json_decode()` function to convert the JSON string into a PHP variable. Here's an example of how you can do this with the provided JSON:

php
$json = '{
"type": "donut",
"name": "Cake",
"toppings": [
{ "id": "5002", "type": "Glazed" },
{ "id": "5006", "type": "Chocolate with Sprinkles" },
{ "id": "5004", "type": "Maple" }
]
}';

$data = json_decode($json);

// Accessing the data
echo $data->type; // Output: donut
echo $data->name; // Output: Cake

foreach ($data->toppings as $topping) {
echo $topping->id . ': ' . $topping->type . '
';
}
// Output:
// 5002: Glazed
// 5006: Chocolate with Sprinkles
// 5004: Maple


In this example, we first decode the JSON string using `json_decode()` and store the resulting data in the `$data` variable. We can then access the individual properties of the JSON object using object notation (`->`). In the case of an array within the JSON, such as the "toppings" array, we can iterate over it using a `foreach` loop to access each item within the array.