PHP why won't this JSON decode - php

Question

SOLVED - html_entity_decode was the solution
My JSON is not decoding. Can anyone spot my mistake?
The JSON string looks like this:
{"ustaAddr":"1198 Industrial Way","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA","ustaPCode":"90210"}
Here is the code:
$newShipTo = stripslashes($aTrans['new_ship_to']);
if ($newShipTo != ""){
$arrShipToAddr = json_decode($newShipTo, TRUE);
$buyer_addr = $arrShipToAddr['ustaAddr'];
$buyer_city = $arrShipToAddr['ustaCity'];
$buyer_pcode= $arrShipToAddr['ustaPCode'];
$shipTo_addr = 'TEST' . '<p>' .$buyer_addr. '</p><p>'.$buyer_city. '</p><p>'.$buyer_pcode. '</p>' ;
}
echo $shipTo_addr;
Result:
TEST
I also tried this:
$shipTo_addr = $arrShipToAddr['ustaAddr'] .' - '. $newShipTo;
Result:
- {"ustaAddr":"1198 Industrial Way","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA","ustaPCode":"90210"}
I also tried this:
$shipTo_addr = $arrShipToAddr->ustaAddr .' - '. $newShipTo;
Result:
- {"ustaAddr":"1198 Industrial Way","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA","ustaPCode":"90210"}
Can anyone spot what I've done wrong? I can't see it...
UPDATE:
The json_decode() statement is failing, but I can't see why.
$shipTo_addr = (is_array($arrShipToAddr)) ? 'yes' : 'no';
Returns "no"
Update Two:
I hard-coded the text string (copy/pasted from the screen result from above test output!), and it worked! (Of course, that's not a solution as the JSON string is dynamically created elsewhere and retrieved from MySQL).
$newShipTo = '{"ustaAddr":"1198 Industrial Way One","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA Two","ustaPCode":"90210 Free"}';
if ($newShipTo != ""){
$arrShipToAddr = json_decode($newShipTo, TRUE);
$shipTo_addr = (is_array($arrShipToAddr)) ? 'yes' : 'no';
}
Result:
yes
I also tried these promising suggestions, but no joy:
$newShipTo = json_encode(stripslashes($aTrans['new_ship_to'])); //re-encode using PHP json_encode
and
$arrShipToAddr = json_decode(utf8_encode($newShipTo), TRUE); //force utf8

Answer 1

It works for me, but you can try :
$arrShipToAddr = json_decode(utf8_encode($newShipTo), TRUE);

Answer 2

Try this:
$newShipTo = '{"ustaAddr":"1198 Industrial Way","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA","ustaPCode":"90210"}';
which then can be decoded it into an array.

Answer 3

Well guys, someone over here asked if there was anything unusual about the field type in the database.
The data, as stored in the field, was html_entitied (looked like this):
{\"ustaAddr\":\"1198 Industrial Way Here\",\"ustaCity\":\"Carmel, CA We\",\"ustaPCode\":\"90210 Go\"}
However, after using stripslashes and json_decode, the string outputted like this:
{"ustaAddr":"176 Industrial Drive","ustaCity":"Carmel, CA","ustaPCode":"90210"}
At first, I thought it was the TEXT field type and thought that changing to a VARCHAR was the solution. Nope.
Using stripslashes and json_decode wasn't enough. To solve the problem, I had to do this:
$newShipTo = stripslashes(html_entity_decode($aTrans['new_ship_to']));
So, the complete code block:
$newShipTo = stripslashes(html_entity_decode($aTrans['new_ship_to']));
if ($newShipTo != ""){
$arrShipToAddr = json_decode($newShipTo, TRUE);
$buyer_addr = $arrShipToAddr['ustaAddr'];
$buyer_city = $arrShipToAddr['ustaCity'];
$buyer_pcode= $arrShipToAddr['ustaPCode'];
$shipTo_addr = '<p>' .$buyer_addr. '</p><p>'.$buyer_city. '</p><p>'.$buyer_pcode. '</p>' ;
}