What is PHP?
PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML code. PHP can support multiple databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, and can be easily deployed on a wide range of operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows.
What is JSON?
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a language-independent text format for storing and exchanging data. Developers use JSON for web browser-server communication and server-to-server communication via REST API. Many programming languages have built-in or external libraries for creating and manipulating JSON data strings, including PHP, JavaScript, Java, C++, C#, Go, and Python. JSON file names use the .json extension.
What is an array in PHP?
In PHP, an array is a variable that we use to store data containing various elements. The elements of an array are identified by a unique key or index, which can be a number or a string. PHP has two types of arrays: indexed arrays and associative arrays. PHP provides many built-in functions for working with arrays, including searching, sorting, splitting a string to array, converting an array to string, getting the length of an array, and converting an array to JSON.
How to encode a PHP array into a JSON string?
There are two types of arrays in PHP: regular and associative (an associative array uses a key-value structure to store data). The json_encode() function can convert both array types to a JSON data string. The following is an example of converting an associative array to a JSON string:
Converting PHP Array to JSON Examples
The following are examples of converting a PHP array to JSON:
Converting an array to JSON
The following is an example of converting an array to JSON using the json_encode() method:
Converting an associative array to JSON
The following is an example of converting an associative array to JSON using the json_encode() method:
Converting a multidimensional associative array to JSON
The following is an example of converting a multidimensional associative array to JSON using the json_encode() function: