Removing by ID from a .json file with PHP - php

Question

I am having a hard time removing a record in my .json file by id.
So my original JSON looks like this:
[["{\"id\":1474753066818,\"name\":\"dd\",\"brand\":\"dd\",\"price\":\"12\"}"],["{\"id\":1474753069035,\"name\":\"dd3\",\"brand\":\"dd\",\"price\":\"12\"}"]]
And this is my php:
<?php
$string = file_get_contents("products.json");
//var_dump($string);
$input = json_decode($string, true);
$output = array();
//here starts the problem
foreach($input as $element) {
if($_GET['data'] != $element[0]["id"]){ //add in array if id doesn't match
$output[] = $element;
}
}
$final = json_encode($output);
$f = #fopen("products.json", "r+");
if ($f !== false) {
ftruncate($f, 0);
fclose($f);
}
file_put_contents("products.json", $final);
>
Basically my problem starts in the foreach where I am iterating through something that looks like this :
array(2) { [0]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(58) "{"id":1474753066818,"name":"dd","brand":"dd","price":"12"}" } [1]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(59) "{"id":1474753069035,"name":"dd3","brand":"dd","price":"12"}" } }
Obviously here I am not able to access the id like I am trying to do in the foreach, because the whole thing is a string.
I have no idea how can I turn this string to an array, compare the id's and then encode it back to my original json format shown at the begining of this post.
Please help!

Answer 1

Your products.json file is a little strange, see below:
[
[
"{\"id\":1474753066818,\"name\":\"dd\",\"brand\":\"dd\",\"price\":\"12\"}"
],
[
"{\"id\":1474753069035,\"name\":\"dd3\",\"brand\":\"dd\",\"price\":\"12\"}"
]
]
Your products.json contains an array of arrays with 1 element whose value is a json encoded string. It looks like you will have to call json_decode again on the string contents to get what you're after.
foreach($input as $element) {
$product = json_decode($element[0]);
if($_GET['data'] != $product["id"]){
//add in array if id doesn't match
$output[] = $product ;
}
}
It's also important to note that the rest of your code:
$final = json_encode($output);
$f = #fopen("products.json", "r+");
if ($f !== false) {
ftruncate($f, 0);
fclose($f);
}
file_put_contents("products.json", $final);
Will not ending up saving the products.json in the same way that you are currently reading it. With the code I provided above it will probably end up looking like this:
[
{"id":1474753066818,"name":"dd","brand":"dd","price":"12"},
{"id":1474753069035,"name":"dd3","brand":"dd","price":"12"}
]