How to Parse this JSON (PHP & JSON_DECODE) - php

Question

I am using the following API: https://openweathermap.org and it gives a JSON response to get the current weather.
{
"coord":{
"lon":
"lat":
},
"weather":[
{
"id":521,
"main":"Rain",
"description":"shower rain",
"icon":"09n"
}
],
"base":"stations",
"main":{
"temp":289.22,
"pressure":1004,
"humidity":82,
"temp_min":288.15,
"temp_max":290.15
},
"visibility":10000,
"wind":{
"speed":4.1,
"deg":210
},
"clouds":{
"all":100
},
"dt":1501793400,
"sys":{
"type":1,
"id":5060,
"message":0.0039,
"country":"GB",
"sunrise":1501734589,
"sunset":1501790444
},
"id":3333126,
"name":"Borough of Blackburn with Darwen",
"cod":200
}
What is the correct way to go about getting the main and description in the JSON?
I have attempted the code below but it doesn't work:
$url = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?lat=" . $latitude . "&lon=" . $longitude . "&APPID=71f4ecbff00aaf4d61d438269b847f11";
$dirty_data = file_get_contents( $url );
$data = json_decode( $dirty_data );
echo $data['weather']['main'];

Answer 1

When using json_decode() to convert json data to php type, it will always convert it into an object. To be clear you can access weather's main and description property like this:
echo $data->weather[0]->main // outputs main
echo $data->weather[0]->description // outputs description
Update:
Besides you can also convert data into an associative array by passing bool(true) $assoc argument to the json_decode() function.
$data = json_decode( $dirty_data, true );
And extract your data like this:
echo $data['weather'][0]['main']; // for main
echo $data['weather'][0]['description']; // for description

Answer 2

Yo can always do var_dump($data) to see what you have and how to access it.
json_decode returns a stdClass not an array.
$data->weather[0]->main;
Should be the right thing.
{} symbolizes an object and [] symbolizes an array. Notice weather:[{...}] which means weather is an array of objects.

Answer 3

Try
$data = json_decode( $dirty data, true)
It doesn't convert to an object if you supply the true argument.