How to output JSON onto page using PHP - php

Question

Okay so I'm playing around with php at the moment. I have a .html file and a .php file. The .html file contains a textarea. The .php file contains some functions that messes around with the user's typed json string. I know how to output php onto the webpage. I want to output the WHOLE json script onto the textarea. Basically in the .php file, I want to convert the json to a string, and pass that string into the .html's textarea.
This is the json:
{
"destination_addresses" : [ "New Town, Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 5DJ, UK" ],
"origin_addresses" : [ "Maresfield, East Sussex TN22 2AF, UK" ],
"rows" : [
{
"elements" : [
{
"distance" : {
"text" : "3.0 mi",
"value" : 4855
},
"duration" : {
"text" : "22 mins",
"value" : 1311
},
"status" : "OK"
}
]
}
],
"status" : "OK"
}
I tried using json_encode() but got errors because of the quotations marks being out of place so Im wondering if theres an easier way to convert the whole json to a string .

Answer 1

If you are not getting the line returns and tabs for formatting you can use my pretty json print function, which will add tabs and line returns to the json data.
function PrettyJson($json) {
$tc = 0; //tab count
$r = ''; //result
$q = false; //quotes
$t = "\t"; //tab
$nl = "\n"; //new line
for($i=0;$i<strlen($json);$i++){
$c = $json[$i];
if($c=='"' && $json[$i-1]!='\\') $q = !$q;
if($q){
$r .= $c;
continue;
}
switch($c){
case '{':
case '[':
$r .= $c . $nl . str_repeat($t, ++$tc);
break;
case '}':
case ']':
$r .= $nl . str_repeat($t, --$tc) . $c;
break;
case ',':
$r .= $c;
if($json[$i+1]!='{' && $json[$i+1]!='[') $r .= $nl . str_repeat($t, $tc);
break;
case ':':
$r .= $c . ' ';
break;
default:
$r .= $c;
}
}
return $r;
}
Then you just echo it
echo '<textarea>'.PrettyJson( $json ).'</textarea>';
Basically what it does is given json string like this
{"one":[1,2,3],"two":{"three":3}}
It will make it like this ( or similar )
{
"one" : [1,2,3],
"two" : {
"three" : 3
}
}
Typically I just use it for display so I am not sure right off if you need to remove the white space when decoding it.

Answer 2

If the PHP holds also the HTML then just use htmlspecialchars() to escape the special characters that would be problematic between the <textarea> tag.
Small example of a PHP file:
<?php
// Get the json value from a previous POST or set a default value.
$json = isset($_POST['json']) ? $_POST['json'] : '{
"destination_addresses" : [ "New Town, Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 5DJ, UK" ],
"origin_addresses" : [ "Maresfield, East Sussex TN22 2AF, UK" ],
"rows" : [
{
"elements" : [
{
"distance" : {
"text" : "3.0 mi",
"value" : 4855
},
"duration" : {
"text" : "22 mins",
"value" : 1311
},
"status" : "OK"
}
]
}
],
"status" : "OK"
}';
?>
<form method="POST" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">
<div><!-- because form elements should not be direct childs of the form -->
<label for="json">Type your JSON:</label>
<br />
<textarea name="json" rows="25" cols="84"><?php echo htmlspecialchars($json); ?></textarea>
<br />
<br />
<input type="submit" value="submit" />
</div>
</form>