PHP: JSON format outputs into one long single line

Question

here is my PHP script.

do2:locu alexus$ cat venuesearch.php 
<?php

$KEY='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX';
$URL='http://api.locu.com/v1_0/venue/search/?api_key=';

$ch=curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $URL.$KEY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER,0);

print_r(json_decode(curl_exec($ch),TRUE));

?>
do2:locu alexus$

locu service provides output in JSON format. When I run script I'm getting output all in long single line.

sample of output:

do2:locu alexus$ php venuesearch.php 
{"meta": {"cache-expiry": 3600, "limit": 25}, "objects": [{"categories": ["restaurant"], "country": "United States",..........

What am I missing? How can I access each of those variables? maybe it makes sense to convert it into XML?

* UPDATE * : .. in example #1 of PHP: json_decode - Manual shows formated output, if I use true then I get array, I'm not getting neither formatet output nor array.

whats wrong with output JSON format into one long single line? — Aboodred1
– Aboodred1, Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 23:12
You can access it through: $var = json_decode(); $var['key'] eg. — Julian Hille
– Julian Hille, Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 23:12
When you parse the JSON in PHP, you get back a PHP array or object and can do whatever you want to do with it. Doesn't php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php explain it? But the output you posted shouldn't be the result of json_decode. Are you sure you are not printing the response directly? And no, it does not make sense to convert a data format into another one in this case, you just have to parse the data properly. — Felix Kling
– Felix Kling, Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 23:13
> "maybe it makes sense to convert it into XML" - heh, then you've got 2 problems. — Hamish
– Hamish, Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 23:13

Stegrex · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-24 23:22:34Z

3

Try adding:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

before execution.

It looks like the execution is simply printing the response rather than returning it as a string to be processed by json_decode.

answered Feb 24, 2013 at 23:22

Stegrex

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2 Comments

Fabian Schmengler Over a year ago

Oh, I missed that. Makes more sense than my answer :) The tricky thing is that print_r(null) outputs nothing. A good reason to use var_dump instead...

Stegrex Over a year ago

@fab Your answer is still good because separating each procedure can help to identify the probelm. alexus, I would still take a look at fab's answer to isolate the problem because it's far easier to debug each individual function call rather than a bunch of nested calls.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:24:51Z

2

You should look at the original data:

$json = curl_exec($ch);
var_dump($json);

Your described output is only possible if the API returns a json encoded json string, like that:

"{\"meta\": {\"cache-expiry\": 3600, \"limit\": 25}, \"objects\": [{\"categories\": [\"restaurant\"], \"country\": \"United States\",.......... '

(note the outer quotes, they are part of the string)

This is very weird and definitly a bug in the API but the only way to get around it is to decode it twice:

$data = json_decode(json_decode($json));

Edit: Forget that, Stegrex has figured it out.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:24

CommunityBot

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answered Feb 24, 2013 at 23:23

Fabian Schmengler

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