PHP json_decode skips part of source JSON

Question

I have a problem with a piece of JSON and PHP\'s json_decode(). We receive JSON from a customer\'s publishing solution, and although it validates, json_decod

Answer 1

You will not get that to work. json_decode exports the data as php objects or arrays - and therefore no duplicate keys / properties are allowed.

Maybe you can convince the customer to change the json format into something like this:

{
    "articles":{
        "article":{
            "title":"This is the title",
            "document":{
                "text_article":[
                    {
                        "type":"p",
                        "content":[
                            "- The first sentence."
                        ]
                    },
                    {
                        "type":"h3",
                        "content":[
                            "The first subtitle."
                        ]
                    },
                    {
                        "type":"p",
                        "content":[
                            "- One sentence.",
                            "Another sentence.",
                            "- A quote."
                        ]
                    }
                ]
            },
            "knr":"0001"
        }
    }
}

There, you have an array text_article containing objects for each tag - each containing an array of contents. The objects can be extended by further attributes as needed.

Answer 2

just to add a possible option...

the library jsonlint can be used to validate your json string. It will take arguments to either ignore/detect duplicate keys.

whilst this wont fix your problem, at least youd be able to detect any errors so avoiding data corruption.