access data array in JSON with Laravel & Guzzle - php

Question

I'm trying to retrieve data from an API that gives a response like so:
{
"data":[
{
"first_name":"John",
"last_name":"Smith",
"group":"3",
"email":"jsmith#talktalk.net"
},
{
"first_name":"John",
"last_name":"Doe",
"group":"3",
"email":"johndoe#aol.com"
}
],
"meta":{
"pagination":{
"total":2,
"count":2,
"per_page":500,
"current_page":1,
"total_pages":1,
"links":[
]
}
}
}
I'm trying to use Guzzle to import into my Laravel app
$client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client();
$response = $client->request('GET', 'http://localhost/members.json');
$data = (string) $response->getBody();
and then a foreach to loop over each record and then add it to the database. Right now though I'm struggling to drill down into a record.
What am I missing?
EDIT: Here's the foreach
foreach ($data['data'] as $person) {
Contact::create(array(
'name' => $person->first_name,
));
}

Answer 1

Your $data variable holds json. Lets first make it a nice array and then loop it through
$response = json_decode($data, true);
Now the loop itself:
foreach($response['data'] as $element) {
$firstName = $element['first_name'];
$lastName = $element['last_name'];
$group = $element['group'];
$email = $element['email'];
//Now here you can send it to the modele and create your db row.
}