PHP: json_decode on copyright symbol - php

Question

I am using PHP 5.2.9-2 with WAMP on a Windows machine.
I am having a problem trying to decode a JSON string that contains a copyright symbol in one of the elements. The function always return NULL. My first thought was to attempt to escape the character, but the htmlentities() function just returns the same string. I tried to pass the arguments like so:
htmlentities($json, ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');
But that only returns an empty string. I thought about trying ENT_IGNORE, but it is only available in PHP 5.3.0+. How can I get this JSON string correctly encoded into a JSON object when it has this copyright symbol in it?
I do not have control over the source of the JSON and yes, it is properly formatted. I am getting the information from a 3rd party API and the string has a file size of a little more than 20MB. I use ajax to get the JSON then save it to a file and later read it in to the PHP.
EDIT: Here's a link to the JSON I'm working with.
DROPBOX LINK
The specific line is this
...{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"©lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}...
EDIT2:
To clarify, I am looking to convert this JSON string into a JSON object so that I can use a foreach loop to extract each part and process it. If I end up with a string at the end, I get no where. I have been using the decode function like so to get associative arrays:
json_decode($json, true);
EDIT 3:
I've put together a barebones version of the problem. All I do is read in the JSON from a txt file and attempt to run it through the json_decode() function. With the copyright symbol, it fails. Without it, it works fine. Here it is:
***Contents of SOExampleJSON.txt***
{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"©lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}
***PHP Code***
<?php
echo '<pre>';
$rawJson = file_get_contents('SOExampleJSON.txt');
var_dump($rawJson);
$json = json_decode($rawJson);
var_dump($json);
echo '</pre>';
?>
***Output***
string(120) "{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"©lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}"
NULL
***Output when copyright is removed***
string(119) "{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}"
object(stdClass)#1 (8) {
["Ranking"]=>
int(1115)
["Name"]=>
string(9) "lutchGod-"
["Rank"]=>
int(55)
["TotalExp"]=>
int(8571865)
["KDR"]=>
float(1.14)
["Kill"]=>
int(66459)
["HeadShot"]=>
int(11785)
["clan"]=>
string(4) " pG "
}
I need the object as it is above, but I need to preserve the "Name" in such a way that I can compare it later. I don't care what format it is in, as long as it is usable. As far as I know, this is the only name with such a symbol. The symbol isn't even allowed as part of a name, but the developers have obviously goofed somewhere in their checking and now I'm having to find a way around it until they fix it. I reported it 2 months ago and there still hasn't been anything done about it, so I don't expect it to be any time soon.

Answer 1

yuck, PHP 5.2.X...
i think this hack should work
<?php
$json=base64_decode('eyJSYW5raW5nIjoxMTE1LCJOYW1lIjoiwqlsdXRjaEdvZC0iLCJSYW5rIjo1NSwiVG90YWxFeHAiOjg1NzE4NjUsIktEUiI6MS4xNCwiS2lsbCI6NjY0NTksIkhlYWRTaG90IjoxMTc4NSwiY2xhbiI6IiBwRyAifQ==');
assert(strlen($json)>1);
$parsedJson=json_decode($json,true);
assert($parsedJson!=null);
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
var str=atob("<?php echo base64_encode(var_export($parsedJson,true));?>");
alert(str);
</script>
though, when you upgrade to 5.4.0 or newer, this would be a much better approach
<?php
$json=base64_decode('eyJSYW5raW5nIjoxMTE1LCJOYW1lIjoiwqlsdXRjaEdvZC0iLCJSYW5rIjo1NSwiVG90YWxFeHAiOjg1NzE4NjUsIktEUiI6MS4xNCwiS2lsbCI6NjY0NTksIkhlYWRTaG90IjoxMTc4NSwiY2xhbiI6IiBwRyAifQ==');
assert(strlen($json)>1);
$parsedJson=json_decode($json,true,1337);
assert($parsedJson!=null);
echo '<pre>';
ob_start();
var_dump($parsedJson);
echo htmlentities(ob_get_clean(),ENT_SUBSTITUTE);
echo '</pre>';
Also, your problem is probably not the json decoding, its the html encoding, you need PHP 5.3.0 or higher for ENT_IGNORE, and you need PHP 5.4.0 for ENT_SUBSTITUTE , and without at least ENT_IGNORE: "If the input string contains an invalid code unit sequence within the given encoding an empty string will be returned, unless either the ENT_IGNORE or ENT_SUBSTITUTE flags are set." ( http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php ) ..i guess the # counts. but use assert just to be sure about that. also use error_reporting(E_ALL); , preferably even exception_error_handler ( see here http://php.net/manual/en/class.errorexception.php )

Answer 2

This code works for me using PHP 5.6.6 on Windows. To preserve the © I'm using urlencode before json_encode and then I use urldecode after using json_decode to get it back.
<?php
$test = urlencode('{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"©lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}');
$test2= json_encode($test);
var_dump(urldecode(json_decode($test2)));
Edit: update to address latest comment
This time on Ubuntu (PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.6 (cli) (built: Feb 13 2015 19:17:11))
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
$test = '{"Ranking":1115,"Name":"©lutchGod-","Rank":55,"TotalExp":8571865,"KDR":1.14,"Kill":66459,"HeadShot":11785,"clan":" pG "}';
$test2 = json_decode($test);
print_r($test2);
Output:
stdClass Object
(
[Ranking] => 1115
[Name] => ©lutchGod-
[Rank] => 55
[TotalExp] => 8571865
[KDR] => 1.14
[Kill] => 66459
[HeadShot] => 11785
[clan] => pG
)