'PHP: json_decode not working

This does not work:

$jsonDecode = json_decode($jsonData, TRUE);

However if I copy the string from $jsonData and put it inside the decode function manually it does work.

This works:

$jsonDecode = json_decode('{"id":"0","bid":"918","url":"http:\/\/www.google.com","md5":"6361fbfbee69f444c394f3d2fa062f79","time":"2014-06-02 14:20:21"}', TRUE);

I did output $jsonData copied it and put in like above in the decode function. Then it worked. However if I put $jsonData directly in the decode function it does not.

var_dump($jsonData) shows:

string(144) "{"id":"0","bid":"918","url":"http:\/\/www.google.com","md5":"6361fbfbee69f444c394f3d2fa062f79","time":"2014-06-02 14:20:21"}"

The $jsonData comes from a encrypted $_GET variable. To encrypt it I use this:

$key = "SOME KEY";

$iv_size = mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_BLOWFISH, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB);
$iv = mcrypt_create_iv($iv_size, MCRYPT_RAND);

$enc = mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_BLOWFISH, $key, $data, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, $iv);

$iv = rawurlencode(base64_encode($iv));
$enc = rawurlencode(base64_encode($enc));

//To Decrypt
$iv = base64_decode(rawurldecode($_GET['i']));
$enc = base64_decode(rawurldecode($_GET['e']));

$data = mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_BLOWFISH, $key, $enc, MCRYPT_MODE_ECB, $iv);
phpjson


Solution 1:[1]

some time there is issue of html entities, for example \" it will represent like this \&quot, so you must need to parse the html entites to real text, that you can do using html_entity_decode() method of php. 

$jsonData = stripslashes(html_entity_decode($jsonData));

$k=json_decode($jsonData,true);

print_r($k);

Solution 2:[2]

You have to use preg_replace for avoiding the null results from json_decode

here is the example code

$json_string = stripslashes(html_entity_decode($json_string));

$bookingdata =  json_decode( preg_replace('/[\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF]/', '', $json_string), true );

Solution 3:[3]

Judging from the other comments, you could use,

$jsonDecode = json_decode(trim($jsonData), TRUE);

Solution 4:[4]

While moving on php 7.1 I encountered with json_decode error number 4 (json syntex error). None of the above solution on this page worked for me.

After doing some more searching i found solution at https://stackoverflow.com/a/15423899/1545384 and its working for me.

//Remove UTF8 Bom

function remove_utf8_bom($text)
{
    $bom = pack('H*','EFBBBF');
    $text = preg_replace("/^$bom/", '', $text);
    return $text;
}

Solution 5:[5]

Be sure to set header to JSON

header('Content-type: application/json;');

Solution 6:[6]

str_replace("\t", " ", str_replace("\n", " ", $string))

because json_decode does not work with special characters. And no error will be displayed. Make sure you remove tab spaces and new lines. Depending on the source you get your data, you might need also: stripslashes(html_entity_decode($string))

Works for me:

<?php

$sql = <<<EOT

    SELECT *
        FROM `students`;

EOT;
    $string = '{ "query" : "' . str_replace("\t", " ", str_replace("\n", " ", $sql)).'" }';
    print_r(json_decode($string));

?>

output:

stdClass Object
(
    [query] =>          SELECT *      FROM `students`;     
)

Solution 7:[7]

I had problem that json_decode did not work, solution was to change string encoding to utf-8. This is important in case you have non-latin characters.

Solution 8:[8]

Interestingly mcrypt_decrypt seem to add control characters other than \0 at the end of the resulting text because of its padding algorithm. Therefore instead of rtrim($jsonData, "\0") it is recommended to use 

preg_replace( "/\p{Cc}*$/u", "", $data)

on the result $data of mcrypt_decrypt. json_decode will work if all trailing control characters are removed. Pl refer to the comment by Peter Bailey at http://php.net/manual/en/function.mdecrypt-generic.php .

Solution 9:[9]

USE THIS CODE

<?php 
   $json = preg_replace('/[[:cntrl:]]/', '', $json_data);
   $json_array = json_decode($json, true);
   echo json_last_error();
   echo json_last_error_msg();
   print_r($json_array);
?>

Solution 10:[10]

Make sure your JSON is actually valid. For some reason I was convinced that this was valid JSON:

{ type: "block" }

While it is not. Point being, make sure to validate your string with a linter if you find json_decode not te be working.

Solution 11:[11]

Try the JSON validator.

The problem in my case was it used ' not ", so I had to replace it to make it working.

Solution 12:[12]

In notepad+ I changed encoding of json file on: "UTF-8 without BOM". JSON started to work

Solution 13:[13]

Use following function:

If JSON_ERROR_UTF8 occurred :

$encoded = json_encode( utf_convert( $responseForJS ) );

Below function is used to encode Array data recursively

/* Use it for json_encode some corrupt UTF-8 chars * useful for = malformed utf-8 characters possibly incorrectly encoded by json_encode */

function utf_convert( $mixed ) {
    if (is_array($mixed)) {
        foreach ($mixed as $key => $value) {
            $mixed[$key] = utf8ize($value);
        }
    } elseif (is_string($mixed)) {
        return mb_convert_encoding($mixed, "UTF-8", "UTF-8");
    }
    return $mixed;
}

Solution 14:[14]

Maybe it helps someone, check in your json string if you have any NULL values, json_decode will not work if a NULL is present as a value.

This super basic function may help you. I made the NULL in an array just in case I need to add more stuff in the future.

function jsonValueFix($json){
    $json = str_replace( array('NULL'),'""',$json );
    return $json;
}

Solution 15:[15]

I just used json_decode twice and it worked for me

$response = json_decode($apiResponse, true);
$response = json_decode($response, true);

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