Parsing JSON in for each with increment PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to parse a json file into a for each loop. The issue is the data is nested in containers with incremented numbers, which is an issue as I can't then just grab each value in the foreach. I've spent a while trying to find a way to get this to work and I've come up empty. Any idea?
Here is the json file tidied up so you can see what I mean - http://www.jsoneditoronline.org/?url=http://ergast.com/api/f1/current/last/results.json
I am trying to get values such as [number] but I also want to get deeper values such as [Driver][code]
<?php
// get ergast json feed for next race
$url = "http://ergast.com/api/f1/current/last/results.json";
// store array in $nextRace
$json = file_get_contents($url);
$nextRace = json_decode($json, TRUE);
$a = 0;
// get array for next race
// get date and figure out how many days remaining
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races']['0']['Results'][' . $a++ . '];
foreach ($nextRaceDate['data'] as $key=>$val) {
echo $val['number'];
}
?>

Answer 1

While decoding the json there's no need to flatten the object to an Associative array. Just use it how it is supposed to be used.
$nextRace = json_decode($json);
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace->MRData->RaceTable->Races[0]->Results;
foreach($nextRaceDate as $race){
echo 'Race number : ' . $race->number . '<br>';
echo 'Race Points : ' . $race->points. '<br>';
echo '====================' . '<br>';
}
CodePad Example

Answer 2

You are nearly correct with your code, you are doing it wrong when you try the $a++. Remove the $a = 0, you won't need it.
Till here you are correct
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races']['0']['Results']
What you have to do next is this
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races']['0']['Results'];
foreach($nextRaceDate as $key => $value){
foreach($value as $key2 => $value2)
print_r($value2);
So, in my code, you are stopping at Results, and then, you want to iterate over all the results, from 0 to X, the first foreach will do that, you have to access $value for that. So, add another foreach to iterate over all the content that $value has.
There you go, I added a print_r to show you that you are iterating over what you wanted.

Answer 3

The problem is how you access to the elements in the nested array.
Here a way to do it:
$mrData = json_decode($json, true)['MRData'];
foreach($nextRace['RaceTable']['Races'] as $race) {
// Here you have access to race's informations
echo $race['raceName'];
echo $race['round'];
// ...
foreach($race['Results'] as $result) {
// And here to a result
echo $result['number'];
echo $result['position'];
// ...
}
}
I don't know where come's from your object, but, if you're sure that you'll get everytime one race, the first loop could be suppressed and use the shortcut:
$race = json_decode($json, true)['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races'][0];
Your problem is that the index must be an integer because the array is non associative. Giving a string, php was looking for the key '$a++', and not the index with the value in $a.

Answer 4

If you need only the number of the first race, try this way
$a = 0;
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races']['0']['Results'][$a];
echo "\n".$nextRaceDate['number'];
maybe you need to iterate in the 'Races' attribute
If you need all, try this way :
$nextRaceDate = $nextRace['MRData']['RaceTable']['Races'];
foreach ($nextRaceDate as $key => $val) {
foreach ($val['Results'] as $val2) {
echo "\nNUMBER " . $val2['number'];
}
}