PHP POST'ing JSON encoded array data - php

Question

I am trying to POST JSON encoded data to a webhook endpoint that resides in one of our companies Microsoft Teams channels. It accepts basic JSON encoded payloads.
I started off in PostMan on my local machine and POST'd the following to my Teams Channel connector webhook URL:
{
"#context": "https://schema.org/extensions"
"#type": "MessageCard",
"themeColor": "0072C6",
"title": "Test From PostMan",
"text": "This is the text body of the notification card",
"potentialAction": [
{
"#type": "OpenUri",
"name": "View in Browser...",
"targets": [
{ "os": "default", "uri": "https://<REDACTED>" }
]
}
]
}
This works fine, it posts the card into the Teams Channel, with the action button below it.
So I moved to PHP, and I made the code below:
<?php
//api endpoint
$url = 'https://<REDACTED>';
//new curl connection
$ch = curl_init($url);
//build json data array
$postdata = array(
'#context' => 'https://schema.org/extensions',
'#type' => 'MessageCard',
'themeColor' => '0072C6',
'title' => 'Test from curl in PHP',
'text' => 'test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string..',
'potentialAction' => array (
'#type' => 'OpenUri',
'name' => 'View in Browser...',
'targets' => array (
'os' => 'default',
'uri' => 'https://<REDACTED>'
)
)
);
//encode json data array
$encodeddata = json_encode($postdata);
//set curl options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $encodeddata);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
//debug
echo $result;
//close
curl_close($ch);
?>
When I run the above, the API errors and responds saying it was an invalid payload. So I stripped my code down so that my $postdata array was a lot simpler, as below:
//build json data array
$postdata = array(
'#context' => 'https://schema.org/extensions',
'#type' => 'MessageCard',
'themeColor' => '0072C6',
'title' => 'Test from curl in PHP',
'text' => 'test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string..'
);
And this works fine, my PHP script is able to post a card into the Teams Channel, just with no action button underneath it. So my issue here lies in how I'm encoding the additional arrays inside of $postdata ?
I'll be honest, my knowledge of arrays in PHP is limited, I think I'm doing this correctly, but clearly I'm having problems, lol. Is there a different/better/more correct way to encode multiple arrays inside of an array into JSON data to POST?

Answer 1

potentialAction in your original JSON is an array of objects, but you made it a single level array only in your PHP data structure.
You need to wrap this into an additional level:
$postdata = array(
'#context' => 'https://schema.org/extensions',
'#type' => 'MessageCard',
'themeColor' => '0072C6',
'title' => 'Test from curl in PHP',
'text' => 'test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string.. test string..',
'potentialAction' => array (
array (
'#type' => 'OpenUri',
'name' => 'View in Browser...',
'targets' => array (
array (
'os' => 'default',
'uri' => 'https://<REDACTED>'
)
)
)
)
);
This will give you an array of objects in that place, when you encode it as JSON. (The outer array has a zero-based numeric index, so it stays an array when converted to JSON; the inner array has associative keys, so it automatically becomes an object.)
Edit: As mentioned in comments, same thing for the targets property inside. Edited the code, to insert an additional level there as well.