PHP: How to Parse JSON From API call? - php

Question

I have a CURL response that looks like this:
{"page_number":2,"items":[],"items_per_page":1,"kind":"search#companies","total_results":0,"start_index":1}
All i need from that is the value of "total_results":0
so I am trying to get "total_results" like this:
$url = "https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/search/companies?q=POOdfgdfgyygfhfgfgfghgfP&items_per_page=1&start_index=0";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "my_password");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$retcode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $output->total_results[0];
However, when I echo the $output->total_results[0];, I get nothing being echoed on my page. So i don't really know what I am doing wrong!
Could someone please advise on this issue?
any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

What you got as a response is a JSON string. You can parse it to a stdClass object using json_decode:
$object = json_decode( $output );
Then you can access the field you want:
$total_results = $object->total_results;
Alternatively, you can parse the JSON string to an array:
$array = json_decode( $output, true );
and get the var:
$total_results = $array['total_results'];