Converting Object to JSON and JSON to Object in PHP, (library like Gson for Java)

Question

I am developing a web application in PHP,

I need to transfer many objects from server as JSON string, is there any library existing for PHP to convert object to JSON

Answer 1

This should do the trick!

// convert object => json
$json = json_encode($myObject);

// convert json => object
$obj = json_decode($json);

Here's an example

$foo = new StdClass();
$foo->hello = "world";
$foo->bar = "baz";

$json = json_encode($foo);
echo $json;
//=> {"hello":"world","bar":"baz"}

print_r(json_decode($json));
// stdClass Object
// (
//   [hello] => world
//   [bar] => baz
// )

If you want the output as an Array instead of an Object, pass true to json_decode

print_r(json_decode($json, true));
// Array
// (
//   [hello] => world
//   [bar] => baz
// )    

More about json_encode()

See also: json_decode()

Answer 2

json_decode($json, true); 
// the second param being true will return associative array. This one is easy.

Answer 3

I made a method to solve this. My approach is:

1 - Create a abstract class that have a method to convert Objects to Array (including private attr) using Regex. 2 - Convert the returned array to json.

I use this Abstract class as parent of all my domain classes

Class code:

namespace Project\core;

abstract class AbstractEntity {
    public function getAvoidedFields() {
        return array ();
    }
    public function toArray() {
        $temp = ( array ) $this;

        $array = array ();

        foreach ( $temp as $k => $v ) {
            $k = preg_match ( '/^\x00(?:.*?)\x00(.+)/', $k, $matches ) ? $matches [1] : $k;
            if (in_array ( $k, $this->getAvoidedFields () )) {
                $array [$k] = "";
            } else {

                // if it is an object recursive call
                if (is_object ( $v ) && $v instanceof AbstractEntity) {
                    $array [$k] = $v->toArray();
                }
                // if its an array pass por each item
                if (is_array ( $v )) {

                    foreach ( $v as $key => $value ) {
                        if (is_object ( $value ) && $value instanceof AbstractEntity) {
                            $arrayReturn [$key] = $value->toArray();
                        } else {
                            $arrayReturn [$key] = $value;
                        }
                    }
                    $array [$k] = $arrayReturn;
                }
                // if it is not a array and a object return it
                if (! is_object ( $v ) && !is_array ( $v )) {
                    $array [$k] = $v;
                }
            }
        }

        return $array;
    }
}

Answer 4

for more extendability for large scale apps use oop style with encapsulated fields.

Simple way :-

  class Fruit implements JsonSerializable {

        private $type = 'Apple', $lastEaten = null;

        public function __construct() {
            $this->lastEaten = new DateTime();
        }

        public function jsonSerialize() {
            return [
                'category' => $this->type,
                'EatenTime' => $this->lastEaten->format(DateTime::ISO8601)
            ];
        }
    }

echo json_encode(new Fruit()); //which outputs:

{"category":"Apple","EatenTime":"2013-01-31T11:17:07-0500"}

Real Gson on PHP :-

1. http://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer
2. http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/serializer.html
3. http://framework.zend.com/manual/current/en/modules/zend.serializer.html
4. http://fractal.thephpleague.com/ - serialize only