Trying to parse JSON with PHP

Question

I\'m new to php and this has really stumped me - i\'m trying to parse this json in order to get the value of match_id.

{
    \"result\": {
        \         


        

Answer 1

You are getting an array back from json_decode() as you passed the second parameter with a value of true so you access it like any multi-dimensional array:

$matchhistoryjson = file_get_contents($apimatchhistoryurl);
$decodedmatchhistory = json_decode($matchhistoryjson, true);
echo $decodedmatchhistory['result']['matches'][0]['match_id'];

Demo

Naturally if you have multiple matches you wish to get the match ID for you can loop through $decodedmatchhistory['result']['matches'] and get them accordingly.

Answer 2

This is your code:

$matchhistoryjson = file_get_contents($apimatchhistoryurl);
$decodedmatchhistory = json_decode($matchhistoryjson, true);
$matchid = $decodedmatchhistory->{'match_id'};

Two issues. First when you set true in a call to json_decode() that returns the results as an array:

When TRUE, returned objects will be converted into associative arrays.

So you would access the data as an array like this:

$matchid = $decodedmatchhistory['match_id'];

But your original syntax is incorrect even if you were accessing the data as an object:

$matchid = $decodedmatchhistory->{'match_id'};

If you set json_decode() to false or even left that parameter out completely, you could do this instead:

$decodedmatchhistory = json_decode($matchhistoryjson);
$matchid = $decodedmatchhistory->match_id;

So try both out & see what happens.