How to convert JSON string to array

Question

What I want to do is the following:

1. taking JSON as input from text area in php
2. use this input and convert it to JSON and pass it to php curl to send

Answer 1

If you pass the JSON in your post to json_decode, it will fail. Valid JSON strings have quoted keys:

json_decode('{foo:"bar"}');         // this fails
json_decode('{"foo":"bar"}', true); // returns array("foo" => "bar")
json_decode('{"foo":"bar"}');       // returns an object, not an array.