json_decode to array

Question

I am trying to decode a JSON string into an array but i get the following error.

Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in C:\\w

Answer 1

This is a late contribution, but there is a valid case for casting json_decode with (array).
Consider the following:

$jsondata = '';
$arr = json_decode($jsondata, true);
foreach ($arr as $k=>$v){
    echo $v; // etc.
}

If $jsondata is ever returned as an empty string (as in my experience it often is), json_decode will return NULL, resulting in the error Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() on line 3. You could add a line of if/then code or a ternary operator, but IMO it's cleaner to simply change line 2 to ...

$arr = (array) json_decode($jsondata,true);

... unless you are json_decodeing millions of large arrays at once, in which case as @TCB13 points out, performance could be negatively effected.