Parsing JSON from URL with PHP

Question

After googling, implementing code upon code, I still cannot get ANYTHING to display. Nothing. Not one thing.

I have a URL spitting out JSON:

 {"videos":[{"video":{"name":"Sanyo Zio","youtube":"FxxLDr--R5A","post_date":"2010-10-08 01:00:00",...

Here's the code I'm using to access the page:

 $url = file_get_contents("http://[website]/json/test.json");

 $arr = json_decode($url,true);

Now here's a short list of what I've tried to access ANY data from the page:

1:

 print_r($arr);

2:

 foreach($arr['videos']['video'] as $item) {
   echo "Name: ". $item[0] ."<br>"; 
 }

3:

 $obj = $arr[0];
 echo $obj;

4:

 foreach($arr as $a){
   echo "Name: ".$a['videos']['video']['name']."<br />";
 }

Clearly I'm missing something, but I just haven't been able to figure out what I'm doing wrong! Is my encoding not correct? Here's how I'm encoding the JSON to begin with:

 $arr = array('videos' => array());
 foreach($vid as $items){
  $arr['videos'][] = array('video' => array(
    'name' => $items['videoName'], 'youtube' => $items['youtubeID'], 'post_date' => $items['productionTimestamp'], 'description' => $items['videoDesc'], 'link' => $single_linker_values['deeplink'], 'image' => $image));
 }
 echo json_encode($arr);

Any ideas/suggestions?

Update - Apparently the server is locked down, but being inhouse I don't notice :) Obviously the webpage does! Thanks for the help!

So what does print_r($arr); show? What's the problem here? — gen_Eric
– gen_Eric, Commented Jan 7, 2013 at 15:55
var_dump($url); before you try to parse anything, to see if you actually have a response at all. — MrCode
– MrCode, Commented Jan 7, 2013 at 15:57
print_r($arr); doesn't show anything, which leads me to believe the issue is either with the retrieval or the encoding. — cfox
– cfox, Commented Jan 7, 2013 at 16:04

PassKit · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-07 16:11:42Z

1

From PHP Manual

NULL is returned if the json cannot be decoded or if the encoded data is deeper than the recursion limit

Since you are not specifying a recursion limit, chances are that either your JSON is invalid or nothing is being retrieved from your URL.

Three things to try:

determine if there was a json_decode error

print_r(json_last_error()); // call after json_decode
check that data is being returned

print_r($url);
see if data will decode as an object

$obj = json_decode($url);

print_r($obj);

edited Jan 7, 2013 at 16:11

answered Jan 7, 2013 at 15:56

PassKit

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5 Comments

cfox Over a year ago

print_r(json_last_error()); spits out a 0. print_r($url); spits out nothing.

PassKit Over a year ago

So there is the problem, $url is empty meaning file_get_contents("http://[website]/json/test.json"); is not retrieving anything. Can you provide the full URL and we can check?

cfox Over a year ago

I've added the URL to my original question.

PassKit Over a year ago

Your URL is returning a 204 No-Content response

cfox Over a year ago

That would explain it. Server locked down. Guess I'll find another way. Thanks!

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