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 are getting the JSON string from the form using $_REQUEST, $_GET, or $_POST the you will need to use the function html_entity_decode(). I didn't realize this until I did a var_dump of what was in the request vs. what I copied into and echo statement and noticed the request string was much larger.

Correct Way:

$jsonText = $_REQUEST['myJSON'];
$decodedText = html_entity_decode($jsonText);
$myArray = json_decode($decodedText, true);

With Errors:

$jsonText = $_REQUEST['myJSON'];
$myArray = json_decode($jsonText, true);
echo json_last_error(); //Returns 4 - Syntax error;