how cann I convert php class to json [closed]

Question

I am trying to convert a simple class object to json as string. It does not work!. could you help me please.

here are my files:

Peson.php

<?php

class Person
{
    private $name;

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function toJson()
    {
        return json_encode($this);
    }
}

?>

index.php

include 'Person.php'; 
 
$person = new Person();
$person->setName("John");

echo  $person->toJson();
 

Result :

Answer 1

You're getting an empty object because your class doesn't have any public properties to encode. Change name from private to public and you'll get output like this: {"name":"John"}

Answer 2

You can use get_object_vars for this.

public function toJson()
{
    return json_encode(get_object_vars($this)); //returns {"name":"stringNameHere"}
}

More info about get_object_vars here.

This is how your code would look:

class Person
{
    private $name;

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function toJson()
    {
        return json_encode(get_object_vars($this));
    }
}

$person = new Person();

$person->setName('testName');

echo $person->toJson(); //Print {"name":"testName"}

Here you have a live code example

Answer 3

In this case you get an empty object because the properties are private. A way to keep your properties private and still geting their values in a JSON is using the JsonSerializable Interface. Then implementing its method jsonSerialize().

class Person implements JsonSerializable
{
    private $name;

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function jsonSerialize()
  {
      $vars = get_object_vars($this);

      return $vars;
  }
}

Answer 4

<?php

class Person implements \JsonSerializable
{
private $name;

public function getName()
{
    return $this->name;
}

public function setName($name)
{
    $this->name = $name;
}
 public function jsonSerialize()
{
    return get_object_vars($this);
}


}

?>

then, you can convert your person object to JSON with json_encode

  $person = new Person();
  $person->setName("John");

 echo json_encode($person);