php foreach Iteration through json - php

Question

Assume that I have below json response fetched from an API.
{
"owner": "Jane Doe",
"pets": [
{
"color": "white",
"type": "cat"
},
{
"color": "black",
"type": "dog"
}
]
}
From the below PHP code I have converted the json string into a json object. And displayed the pet types.
$jsonObject = json_decode($json);
foreach($jsonObject->pets as $pets){
echo 'Pet type:'.$pets->type.'</br>';
}
However in some cases the response json from the API is in below format
{
"owner": "John Doe",
"pets": {
"color": "white",
"type": "cat"
}
}
in this case above php foreach iteration fails with below message
*Notice: Trying to get property of non-object *
I'm looking for a easy way to do this because the actual json response which i'm handling has lot of these occurrences.

Answer 1

You need to check whether $jsonObject->pets is an array or object. If it's an object, replace it with an array containing that object, then the loop will work.
if (!is_array($jsonObject->pets)) {
$jsonObject->pets = array($jsonObject->pets);
}
You could also do it with a conditional in the foreach:
foreach (is_array($jsonObject->pets) ? $jsonObject->pets : [jsonObject->pets] as $pet) {
...
}
If you don't want to have to write all that every time, you could put it in a function:
function as_array($x) {
return is_array($x) ? $x : [x];
}
and then use:
foreach (as_array($jsonObject->pets) as $pet) {
...
}
I'd also complain to the API designer. It's ridiculous to return inconsistent data formats like this.