how to use JSON.stringify and json_decode() properly

Question

Im trying to pass a mulitidimensional Javascript array to another page on my site by:

• using JSON.stringify on the array

• assigning the result

Answer 1

None of the other answers worked in my case, most likely because the JSON array contained special characters. What fixed it for me:

Javascript (added encodeURIComponent)

var JSONstr = encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(fullInfoArray));
document.getElementById('JSONfullInfoArray').value = JSONstr;

PHP (unchanged from the question)

$data = json_decode($_POST["JSONfullInfoArray"]);
var_dump($data);

echo($_POST["JSONfullInfoArray"]);

Both echo and var_dump have been verified to work fine on a sample of more than 2000 user-entered datasets that included a URL field and a long text field, and that were returning NULL on var_dump for a subset that included URLs with the characters ?&#.