PHP function to call JSON files - php

Question

I am trying to make a basic PHP function in order to call json files repeatedly throughout the app. Every time I want to call a json file I use:
<? $site = json_decode(file_get_contents('views/partials/site.json')); ?>
Then I use echo to use data from json file like this:
<? echo $site[0]->title; ?>
But instead of repeating part one I want to write a function in the header and call it where I want to call a json file. After that i was planning to use the function like this:
$site = jsonCall('site');
by using the function below;
function jsonCall($jsonurl){
// this is one line code. no difference from 3 lines below-> $jsonCalled = json_decode(file_get_contents($homepage . 'views/partials/' . $jsonurl . '.json'));
$url = $homepage . 'views/partials/' . $jsonurl . '.json';
$data = file_get_contents($url); // put the contents of the file into a variable
$jsonCalled = json_decode($data); // decode the JSON feed
echo $jsonCalled;
};
but instead of what i want i got an array as a response from server. i think my function turns json file to an array and that way i can't call it properly.
anyone knows how to solve this simple issue? show me proper way to write this function so my code might look a bit easier to read. Thank you.
by changing echo in function with return and using jsonCall('site')[0]->title; everything worked fine.

Answer 1

Of course you are getting an array. Otherwise $site[0] (which is an array access at key zero) would not have worked.
From the PHP docs (http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php):
Returns the value encoded in json in appropriate PHP type. Values
true, false and null are returned as TRUE, FALSE and NULL
respectively. NULL is returned if the json cannot be decoded or if the
encoded data is deeper than the recursion limit.
Your appropriate PHP type is array.
The following should work:
jsonCall('site')[0]->title;
Therefore I can not see a problem with your code?

Answer 2

The server is responding with Array because that is how PHP represents an array when you are echo'ing it. Your function should be returning the result.
Try:
function jsonCall($jsonurl){
// this is one line code. no difference from 3 lines below-> $jsonCalled = json_decode(file_get_contents($homepage . 'views/partials/' . $jsonurl . '.json'));
$url = $homepage . 'views/partials/' . $jsonurl . '.json';
$data = file_get_contents($url); // put the contents of the file into a variable
$jsonCalled = json_decode($data); // decode the JSON feed
// echo $jsonCalled;
return $jsonCalled; // <- this should work
};