not able to fetch json correctly from curl call? - php

Question

A dummy script that reponds with some json..
<?php
$result['code'] = 200;
echo json_encode($result);
?>
However when I make a curl call to this script,trying to fetch json response and then convert it to array..things go wrong.
Usually I do a simple json_decode($json) and it gives me an array,but apparently when I var_dump json_decode($json) , it gives me int(1) as response. I simply want to fetch the code from the json.
This is my code :
public function curlcall($username, $msg)
{
$url = 'someurl.php';
$fields = array('username' => $username, 'message' => $msg);
$fields_string = null;
foreach ($fields as $key => $value) {$fields_string .= $key . '=' . $value . '&';}
rtrim($fields_string, '&');
//open connection
$ch = curl_init();
//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo '-------------------------';
var_dump($result);
exit;
}
When I directly call the script from rest client, it gives me perfect json response. But when I request the same json via curl, I dont get the desired result while converting that json in to array.
For simplicity sake, I just echoed a string but still when I var_dump it,it gives me int(1).

Answer 1

Try this:
$ch = curl_init();
//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //NOTICE this line, which says you want a response returned to the calling script
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo '-------------------------';
var_dump($result);