How to parse a JSON File in PHP ?

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In this article, we are going to parse the JSON file by displaying JSON data using PHP. PHP is a server-side scripting language used to process the data. JSON stands for JavaScript object notation. JSON data is written as name/value pairs.

Syntax:

{
“Data”:[{
“key”:”value”,
“key”:value,
“key n “:”value”
},
. . .
. . .
{
“key”:”value”,
“key”:value,
“key n “:”value”
}] }

Example: The JSON notation for student details is as follows.

{
“Student”:[{
“Name”:”Sravan”,
“Roll”:7058,
“subject”:”java”
},
{
“Name”:”Jyothika”,
“Roll”:7059,
“subject”:”SAP”
}] }

Advantages:

JSON does not use an end tag.
JSON is a shorter format.
JSON is quicker to read and write.
JSON can use arrays.

Approach: Create a JSON file and save it as my_data.json. We have taken student data in the file. The contents are as follows.

{
“Student”:[{
“Name”:”Sravan”,
“Roll”:7058,
“subject”:”java”
},
{
“Name”:”Jyothika”,
“Roll”:7059,
“subject”:”SAP”
}] }

Use file_get_contents() function to read JSON file into PHP. This function is used to read the file into PHP code.

Syntax:

file_get_contents(path, file_name)

file_name is the name of the file and path is the location to be checked.

Use json_decode() function to decode to JSON file into array to display it.

It is used to convert the JSON into an array.

Syntax:

json_decode($json_object, true)

$json_object is the file object to be read.

PHP code: The following is the PHP code to parse JSON file.

PHP

<?php 
  
// Read the JSON file  
$json = file_get_contents('my_data.json'); 
  
// Decode the JSON file 
$json_data = json_decode($json,true); 
  
// Display data 
print_r($json_data); 
  
?>

Output:

Array ( 
    [Student] => Array ( 
        [0] => Array ( 
            [Name] => Sravan 
            [Roll] => 7058 
            [subject] => java 
        ) 
        [1] => Array ( 
            [Name] => Jyothika 
            [Roll] => 7059 
            [subject] => SAP 
        ) 
    ) 
)