PHP json_encode data with double quotes - php

Question

I'm using this simple code to transform database query results into JSON format:
$result = $mysqli->query("
SELECT
date as a
, sum(sales) as b
, product as c
FROM
default_dataset
GROUP BY
date
, product
ORDER BY
date
");
$data = $result->fetch_all(MYSQLI_ASSOC);
echo stripslashes(json_encode($data));
The problem is that if there are double quotes in the data (e.g. in the product column) returned by this query. The json_encode function does not encode the data in a good JSON format.
Could someone help me how to escape the double quotes that are returned by the query? Thank you.

Answer 1

You will need htmlspecialchars instead of stripslashes with proper encoding (UTF-8, if your page uses UTF-8 charset) and ENT_QUOTES which will escape double quotes preventing data to break. See the code below:
echo htmlspecialchars(json_encode($data), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Answer 2

json_encode already takes care of this, you are breaking the result by calling stripslashes:
echo json_encode($data); //properly formed json

Answer 3

Example with a simple array with double quotes string value.
$yourArr = array(
'title' => 'This is an example with "double quote" check it'
);
// add htmlspecialchars as UTF-8 after encoded
$encodeData = htmlspecialchars(json_encode($yourArr), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $encodeData;
Result:
{"title":"This is an example with \"double quote\" check it"}
According to PHP Manual:
That said, quotes " will produce invalid JSON, but this is only an
issue if you're using json_encode() and just expect PHP to magically
escape your quotes. You need to do the escaping yourself.

Answer 4

Yes, PHP json_encode wouldn't "escape double" quotes, we need to escape those manually in this super simple way-
array_walk($assoc_array, function(&$v, $k) {
if(is_string($v) && strpos($v, '"') !== false) {
$v = str_replace('"', '\"', $v);
}
});
// After escaping those '"', you can simply use json_enocde then.
$json_data = json_encode($assoc_array);

Answer 5

to encode the quotes using htmlspecialchars:
$json_array = array(
'title' => 'Example string\'s with "special" characters'
);
$json_decode = htmlspecialchars(json_encode($json_array), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Answer 6

You can done that using base64_encode and base64_decode
To store in database first convert it to base64_encode and stored into database and if you want that data then you can decrypt that data using base64_decode
$var['cont'] = base64_encode($_POST['data']);
$dd = json_encode($var['cont']);
echo base64_decode ( json_decode($dd) );