How to iterate over a JSON object in PHP

Question

For instance, I have an array of these objects returned in a user_timeline from twitter. The object looks like this:

[{"created_at": "Fri Nov 02 23:44:11 +0000 2012", "id": 264513266083049472, "id_str": "264513266083049472", "text": "@JessLeighMusic do it! This time my dad will be playing!", "source": "\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/download\/iphone\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eTwitter for iPhone\u003c\/a\u003e", "truncated": false, "in_reply_to_status_id": 264489640013217793, "in_reply_to_status_id_str": "264489640013217793", "in_reply_to_user_id": 38814642, "in_reply_to_user_id_str": "38814642", "in_reply_to_screen_name": "JessLeighMusic", "user": {
"id": 143161594,
"id_str": "143161594",
"name": "Mandala Faulkner",
"screen_name": "Mandalastar",
"location": "Ada, Ok",
"description": "I love to sing, play guitar, piano, and flute, but I am still learning everyday. I perform at the Quality Inn the first and third Friday of every month.",
"url": null,
"entities": {
    "description": {
        "urls": []
    }
},

And so on and so forth. Here's my question: when using a foreach in PHP, how to instruct the code to "drill down" to the elements in each {} set? I've never worked with JSON objects before and Twitter's API documentatin is dreadful.

Why do you need to use foreach? You can simple get an object using json_decode and then access the properties. What are you trying to do? — Jean Paul
– Jean Paul, Commented Jul 19, 2013 at 2:11
I'm trying to print the text of a tweet from a larger object, like the one above; I just don't know exactly what kind of array the json_decode returns, so I don't know how to drill down to get the info from the sublevels that I'm looking for. — rainydaymatt
– rainydaymatt, Commented Jul 21, 2013 at 1:16

srain · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-19 01:48:57Z

2

$list = json_decode($json_text, true);
foreach ($list as $item) {
    // $item is the each {} set you want
}

answered Jul 19, 2013 at 1:48

srain

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willoller · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-19 01:47:32Z

1

json_decode() is your friend here. Turns proper json strings into nested php array()s.

You would then foreach over the resulting array:

$json = "json string here";
$result = json_decode($json);

foreach ($result as $object)
{
    //do stuff
}

answered Jul 19, 2013 at 1:47

willoller

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