decoding the JSON output from Microsoft translator API with PHP

Question

this issue seems specific to microsofttranslator.com so please ... any answers, if you can test against it ...

Using the following URL for translat

Answer 1

The API is returning a wrong byte order mark (BOM).
The string data itself is UTF-8 but is prepended with U+FEFF which is a UTF-16 BOM. Just strip out the first two bytes and json_decode.

...
$output = curl_exec($ch);
// Insert some sanity checks here... then,
$output = substr($output, 3);
...
$decoded = json_decode($output, true);

Here's the entirety of my test code.

$texts = array("i am the best" => 0, "you are the best" => 0);
$ch = curl_init(); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$data = array(
    'appId' => $bing_appId,
    'from' => 'en',
    'to' => 'zh-CHS',
    'texts' => json_encode(array_keys($texts))
    );
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $bingArrayUrl . '?' . http_build_query($data)); 
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$output = substr($output, 3);
print_r(json_decode($output, true));

Which gives me

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [From] => en
            [OriginalTextSentenceLengths] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 13
                )

            [TranslatedText] => 我是最好的
            [TranslatedTextSentenceLengths] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 5
                )

        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [From] => en
            [OriginalTextSentenceLengths] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 16
                )

            [TranslatedText] => 你是最好的
            [TranslatedTextSentenceLengths] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 5
                )

        )

)

Wikipedia entry on BOM

Answer 2

There is nothing syntactically wrong with your JSON string. It is possible that the json is coming back with characters outside the UTF-8 byte range, but this would cause json_decode() to throw an exception indicating that.

Test Code:

ini_set("track_errors", 1);

$json = '
 [
      {
           "From":"en",
           "OriginalTextSentenceLengths":[13],
           "TranslatedText":"我是最好的",
           "TranslatedTextSentenceLengths":[5]
      },
      {
           "From":"en",
           "OriginalTextSentenceLengths":[16],
           "TranslatedText":"你是最好的",
           "TranslatedTextSentenceLengths":[5]
      }
 ]
';

$out = @json_decode($json, TRUE);

if(!$out) {
        throw new Exception("$php_errormsg\n");
} else {
        print_r($out);
}

?>

Output:

$ php -f jsontest.php 
Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [From] => en
            [OriginalTextSentenceLengths] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 13
                )                                                                                                                                                                   

            [TranslatedText] => 我是最好的                                                                                                                                          
            [TranslatedTextSentenceLengths] => Array                                                                                                                                
                (                                                                                                                                                                   
                    [0] => 5                                                                                                                                                        
                )                                                                                                                                                                   

        )                                                                                                                                                                           

    [1] => Array                                                                                                                                                                    
        (                                                                                                                                                                           
            [From] => en                                                                                                                                                            
            [OriginalTextSentenceLengths] => Array                                                                                                                                  
                (                                                                                                                                                                   
                    [0] => 16                                                                                                                                                       
                )                                                                                                                                                                   

            [TranslatedText] => 你是最好的                                                                                                                                          
            [TranslatedTextSentenceLengths] => Array                                                                                                                                
                (                                                                                                                                                                   
                    [0] => 5                                                                                                                                                        
                )                                                                                                                                                                   

        )                                                                                                                                                                           

)