How to convert multiple objects into 1 JSON string in PHP - php

Question

My application has a list of reports and each 'Report' is defined as a new object in PHP. I'm trying to make a basic API and I want to show a list of all the 'Reports' in 1 JSON string. My code below works well for encoding 1 object into JSON, but how do I get ALL objects and turn ALL of them into 1 long JSON string?
I understand I could make an array of objects, but that returns these brackets [] and I don't want those brackets in the JSON string.
class report {
public $report_name;
public $report_value;
public $report_benchmark;
public $report_result;
public function __construct($report_name, $report_value, $report_benchmark, $report_result) {
$this->report_name = $report_name;
$this->report_value = $report_value;
$this->report_benchmark = $report_benchmark;
$this->report_result = $report_result;
}
}
$item = new report('test', 0, 0, 'OK');
echo json_encode($item, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

Answer 1

As suggested by #JimL, you can simply add some objects in an array, which you can encode as json latter on.
$item = array();
$item[] = new report('test', 0, 0, 'OK');
$item[] = new report('test2', 0, 0, 'OK');
echo json_encode($item, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
produces:
[{
"report_name": "test",
"report_value": 0,
"report_benchmark": 0,
"report_result": "OK"
}, {
"report_name": "test",
"report_value": 0,
"report_benchmark": 0,
"report_result": "OK"
}]
Note here that you can validate the produced json here

Answer 2

You can do some thing like this.
$item = array();
$item['report1'] = $item = new report('test', 0, 0, 'OK');
$item['report2'] = $item = new report2('test', 0, 0, 'OK');
$item['report3'] = $item = new report3('test', 0, 0, 'OK');
echo json_encode($item, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
make an associative array and add assign all objects a meaning full key, which will help to easy access each specific report.