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I have some JSON data that is saved in a text area as a string. Whilst it looks like JSON, it's technically speaking; not JSON.

How can I convert this string into an array in PHP? Here is an example of latitude and longitude coordinates that will be used on a Google Map:

String:

[{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000}]

PHP:

// get the coordinates
$coords = coordinates( 123 );

// Encode it into actual JSON
$coords = json_encode( $coords );

// Decode it into an array
$coords = json_decode( $coords, true );

If I then use var_dump( $coords );, it prints out the data as a string. What am I doing wrong here? I've looked at the plethora of other questions about this and none solve this issue. It just doesn't seem to work the same way.

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  • 1
    Your string isn’t valid JSON, so it won’t work with any JSON functions. Commented Apr 5, 2018 at 8:15
  • @ThomasEdwards: it is almost valid, though. Maybe one can find a more forgiving json parser. Commented Apr 5, 2018 at 8:17
  • 2
    "What am I doing wrong here?" — You're trying to parse something that you have acknowledged is not JSON as if it were JSON. Commented Apr 5, 2018 at 8:19
  • "I've looked at the plethora of other questions about this and none solve this issue" — Which ones? Is your question significantly different from them? Could you not issue a bounty to attract more attention to a question rather then asking a new one? Don't they all boil down to two solutions — (1) change the input to JSON (2) write a custom parser — anyway? Commented Apr 5, 2018 at 8:20
  • How can I convert this string into valid JSON then? The json_decode function will convert it to an array, but I suppose my issue here is convert this string into valid JSON data to begin with. Commented Apr 5, 2018 at 8:25

2 Answers 2

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If you can't fix what generates this data, you can try to make it valid, as long as it's not too far from valid, at least. From your example, only the double quotes for the keys are missing, you can try with that:

$str = '[{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000}]';

$str = preg_replace('/({\s*|,\s*)([0-9a-zA-Z]+)(\s*:)/', '$1"$2"$3', $str);

var_dump($str); //string(149) "[{"lng": -0.000000, "lat": 10.000000},{"lng": -0.000000, "lat": 10.000000},{"lng": -0.000000, "lat": 10.000000},{"lng": -0.000000, "lat": 10.000000}]"

$data = json_decode($str);

if($data !== null){
    //$data decoded properly
}

This is quickly done, you might need to adapt the criteria for characters in keys and such following your needs.

EDIT: also removed the lazy quantifier from [0-9a-zA-Z]+ which was left from a needlessly wider range previously used

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1 Comment

Throw a json_decode in there and it's perfect. Thank you.
1

As you clearly specified how your syntax looks like, and assuming that there will be always two-level nesting and similar structure, it's not too hard to write a parser for that syntax by hand.

If the structure indeed is more complicated than I assumed, please specify how complex your pseudo-JSON is going to be.

A hand-written parser could, e. g., look like that:

<pre><?php
$data = "[{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000},{lng: -0.000000, lat: 10.000000}]";
$arr = array();

foreach(preg_split("/},{/", substr($data, 2, -2)) as $entry) {
    $subarr = array();
    foreach(preg_split("/, /", $entry) as $subentry) {
        list($key, $val) = preg_split("/: /", $subentry);
        $subarr[$key] = $val;
    }
    $arr[] = $subarr;
}

print_r($arr);
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