Modify text file with php code - php

Question

I have a JSON file badly formatted (doc1.json):
{"text":"xxx","user":{"id":96525997,"name":"ss"},"id":29005752194568192}
{"text":"yyy","user":{"id":32544632,"name":"cc"},"id":29005753951977472}
{...}{...}
And I have to change it in this:
{"u":[
{"text":"xxx","user":{"id":96525997,"name":"ss"},"id":29005752194568192},
{"text":"yyy","user":{"id":32544632,"name":"cc"},"id":29005753951977472},
{...},{...}
]}
Can I do this in a PHP file?

Answer 1

//Get the contents of file
$fileStr = file_get_contents(filelocation);
//Make proper json
$fileStr = str_replace('}{', '},{', $fileStr);
//Create new json
$fileStr = '{"u":[' . $fileStr . ']}';
//Insert the new string into the file
file_put_contents(filelocation, $fileStr);

Answer 2

I would build the data structure you want from the file:
$file_path = '/path/to/file';
$array_from_file = file($file_path);
// set up object container
$obj = new StdClass;
$obj->u = array();
// iterate through lines from file
// load data into object container
foreach($array_from_file as $json) {
$line_obj = json_decode($json);
if(is_null($line_obj)) {
throw new Exception('We have some bad JSON here.');
} else {
$obj->u[] = $line_obj;
}
}
// encode to JSON
$json = json_encode($obj);
// overwrite existing file
// use 'w' mode to truncate file and open for writing
$fh = fopen($file_path, 'w');
// write JSON to file
$bytes_written = fwrite($fh, $json);
fclose($fh);
This assumes each of the JSON object repsentations in your original file are on a separate line.
I prefer this approach over string manipulation, as you can then have built in checks where you are decoding JSON to see if the input is valid JSON format that can be de-serialized. If the script operates successfully, this guarantees that your output will be able to be de-serialized by the caller to the script.