how to encode an url to json using php - php

Question

I want to throw an URL along with some text output as a json from my php webpage and for this I have used json_encode() function in php and the following is my php array that will be converted to json:
$output= array (
'payload' =>
array (
'google' =>
array (
'expectUserResponse' => true,
'richResponse' =>
array (
'items' =>
array (
0 =>
array (
'simpleResponse' =>
array (
'textToSpeech' => '<speak>some text... <audio src=\"https://example.com\"></audio></speak>',
'displayText' => 'some text...',
),
),
),
'suggestions' =>
array (
0 =>
array (
'title' => 'cancel',
),
),
),
),
),
);
echo json_encode($output);
and this php code produces the following json output:
{
"payload": {
"google": {
"expectUserResponse": true,
"richResponse": {
"items": [
{
"simpleResponse": {
"textToSpeech": "<speak>some text... <audio src=\\\"https://example.com\\\"></audio></speak>",
"displayText": "some text..."
}
}
],
"suggestions": [
{
"title": "cancel"
}
]
}
}
}
}
But I need the the following json output:
{
"payload": {
"google": {
"expectUserResponse": true,
"richResponse": {
"items": [
{
"simpleResponse": {
"textToSpeech": "<speak>some text... <audio src=\"https://example.com\"></audio></speak>",
"displayText": "some text..."
}
}
],
"suggestions": [
{
"title": "cancel"
}
]
}
}
}
}
I did not understand how to throw the URL in the json as per my requirment.

Answer 1

If you don't want the escaped slashes, you can use
json_encode($response, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);
to tell PHP not to escape these slashes.
But if you are talking about the backslashes, they have to be escaped like that since PHP interprets them as escape characters. You can always manually remove them on your receiving end.

Answer 2

'<speak>some text... <audio src=\"https://example.com\"></audio></speak>',
The double quotes do not need to be escaped here. The backslashes are treated literally because the string is single quoted. A backslash can only escape a single quote or another backslash inside of single quoted strings. Any other following character results in a literal backslash.
Either '<speak>some text... <audio src="https://example.com"></audio></speak>' (no escaping) or
"<speak>some text... <audio src=\"https://example.com\"></audio></speak>" (double quotes) should give the output you want.