The PHP Function JSON_Last_Error_Msg
In web development, JSON is a common format for exchanging data between different systems. It's lightweight, readable, and is often used as a method of storing data when you want to maintain the hierarchy of the data structure (similar to XML). Working with JSON is also a common task for PHP developers, whether it's for communication between a web server and a client application or to work with modern APIs that return data in JSON format.
PHP provides a set of functions for working with JSON, including the ability to encode data structures in PHP into a JSON string and parse a JSON string into a PHP object or array. It also includes a function to inspect the last error that occurred during JSON encoding/decoding.
Like most of the other php functions, json_encode() can take a wide range of input types – including objects, arrays, and simple values such as strings, integers, or booleans. It can even take a list of inputs and output them as one string, which is useful for creating a simple API for an object or an array.
The json_decode() function will return an object or an associative array (if you pass in the second parameter) on success, and NULL on failure. It will also return an error string if it encounters a recursion limit set using the json_decode() parameters ($depth). For more information on the error handling options for json_decode, check out the php documentation (opens in new window) for this function.