Remove the {1} from an array of objects - php

Question

I want my $row->responses object to look like so:
"responses": [
{
"id": 1381822,
"user_id": 45313,
"respondent_name": "JP Pullen",
"response_time": 1424127673,
"is_root_response": true,
"response_tree_id": 1377018,
"project_users_id": 74311,
"display_name": "Mobile 2",
"lft": 1,
"rgt": 2,
"response_read": true,
"body": "Sure it really is was great I purchased choclate at my local grocery store.",
"answers": [ ],
"avatar_url": null,
"mtime": null,
"media_list": [ ]
},
Yet my $row->responses object looks like:
"responses": {
"1": {
"id": 1381825,
"user_id": 45167,
"respondent_name": "First Name Last Name",
"response_time": 1424128177,
"is_root_response": true,
"response_tree_id": 1377021,
"project_users_id": 74312,
"display_name": "SimonSays",
"lft": 3,
"rgt": 4,
"response_read": false,
"body": "What's up!",
"answers": [ ],
"avatar_url": "https:\/\/portalvhds5kcv8nfhdz8zn.blob.core.windows.net\/user-45167\/avatar-50x50",
"mtime": 1420206441,
"media_list": [ ]
}
}
How do you get rid of the stupid {1} in the object. I didn't get it until I had to loop through the objects and unset one of them. I am not a PHP expert. Strongly Typed FTW lol.
foreach($row->responses as $elementKey => $element)
^ That is how I looped through the responses object to unset one:
unset($row->responses{$elementKey});

Answer 1

When arrays are encoded using json_encode() PHP will determine whether it should use array syntax (square brackets) or object syntax (curly brackets). In this case, the first array index is 1 instead of 0 so it can't reliably be encoded as a JavaScript array.
To prevent this from happening, you can use array_values() to renumber the array to be 0-based again:
$row->responses = array_values($row->responses);