Better way of formatting arrays from javascript to php and vice versa?

Question

I am creating a page that will read, write, and modify data in a mysql database. I am using php with codeigniter to perform the queries however the page that the user will see I am powering with javascript, dynamically filling and changing the data based on the user selections. To do this I am passing lots of data back and forth from php to javascript functions and vice versa, but I am wondering if there is a better way of formatting the data. For example here is a javascript function that uses XMLHttpRequest to call a php function and get the result:

var myarray = new Array(2);
myarray[0] = document.getElementById("my_input").value;
myarray[1] = document.getElementById("my_select").value;
xmlhttp.open("POST", "my_url/my_function/"+myarray.join('|'), false);
xmlhttp.send();
document.getElementById("my_element").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;

I simply do an explode() on the string passed to the php function and execute the necessary queries. This seems like a very awkward interaction between php and javascript. Is there a better, or at least different, way to do this?

Specifically using the json_encode and json_decode methods detailed here: php.net/manual/en/book.json.php — aezell
– aezell, Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 22:04
And its Javascript counter-part: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/… — Mahn
– Mahn, Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 22:05

Mahn · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-10 22:11:02Z

3

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) seems to be what you are looking for. You can turn pretty much all kind of Javascript variables into a string using JSON.stringify and later recover the original structure in php using json_decode, and viceversa using json_encode and JSON.parse.

See:

answered Sep 10, 2012 at 22:11

Mahn

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3 Comments

Will Sampson Over a year ago

Is this not basically what I am emulating using the javascript .join() and php explode() functions except that it could be used with a datatype that is not a string?

Mahn Over a year ago

@WillSampson technically yes, but it can handle nested arrays or objects for instance, or named properties, scenarios where your method could break. Plus, json is a pretty common standard used almost everywhere nowadays.

levi Over a year ago

Bear in mind JSON.stringify is not natively supported in IE 7 or 6, so you will need to use a parser like json2 is you wish to support them.

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