How to parse a JSON File in PHP ?

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 
        ) 
    ) 
)