Creating an API to pass an Array result in PHP

Question

I am not an expert with PHP. I am creating an API in order to get some information from one of my website.

Here is the result of api.php:

array (size=4)
  'price' => string '29.90' (length=5)
  'activation_charge' => string '50.00' (length=5)
  'decoder_price' => string '0.00' (length=4)
  'is_offer' => int 0

I would like to create an API which would send these information. Here is the sample API call :

www.example.com/api.php?product=11&user=kiran

How should I encode the array results so that I can read it through an API call. I hope, the question is clear.

Thanks

There are several formats. You could for example use JSON or XML. It all depends on what you want to provide. Some API's allow several formats to be returned by appending &type=json to the API for example — HamZa
– HamZa, Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 14:57

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 20:29:45Z

1

How should I encode the array results so that I can read it through an API call. I hope, the question is clear.

JSON is a popular choice
- json_encode http://php.net/json_encode
- json_decode https://www.php.net/json_decode
XML is also another popular choice
- http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/how-to-parse-xml-with-php5
CSV is popular depending on the data/application (and variants of; pipe-delimiter, etc)
- explode http://php.net/explode

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 20:29

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answered Jul 15, 2014 at 15:07

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2 Comments

HamZa Over a year ago

That link about XML is about parsing and not generating. Also there are better functions than explode() to parse CSV in php...

ʰᵈˑ Over a year ago

Feel free to make an edit to include links and functions :) But thanks for the info @HamZa - The link works fine for me :/

Niels · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-15 14:56:52Z

0

If you want to return it to Javascript for example. The easiest way is to use JSON.

echo json_encode( $array ) ;

Which will output something like:

{ "price" : 29.9, "activation_charge" : 50.0, "decoder_price" : 0.0, "is_offer" : 0 }

Of course you can create your own format and decode it on the other side.

answered Jul 15, 2014 at 14:56

Niels

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