I don't get a JSON response while using PHP curl - php

Question

I am trying to call the GitHubAPI but when I do curl_exec() the response is a simple string. I would like to get a JSON response. My code is as follows:
if(isset($_GET['code']))
{
global $CLIENTID, $CLIENTSECRET;
$CODE = $_GET['code'];
$postfields = array('client_id' => $CLIENTID, 'client_secret' => $CLIENTSECRET, 'code' => $CODE);
$json_fields = json_encode($postfields);
$ch = curl_init("https://github.com/login/oauth/access_token");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-Type"=>"x-www-form-urlencoded", "Accept"=>"application/json"));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postfields);
$gitResponse = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
if($gitResponse)
{
echo var_dump($gitResponse);
}
else
{
echo "Error";
}
}
else
{
echo '<a href="https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?client_id='.$CLIENTID.'" title="Login with Github">
LOGIN
</a>';
}
I've tried with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER but it didn't work so I commented it.
What I receive is good but it is a string instead of a JSON respone so I can't use the fields of the response.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Add this to your code:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Accept: application/json'));
This will request the server to return a JSON string, then you can turn that to an array to use:
if($gitResponse)
{
$result = json_decode($gitResponse,true);
}