json object is bahaving wrongly - php

Question

I am test-running a web application
where in json is required. I have the following json
structure:
{
"Articles": [
{
"Article": {
"ID": 111,
"title": "Idiot",
"author": "Moron",
"pubDate": "11/2/14",
"summary": "bla bla bla"
},
"Article": {
"ID": 222,
"title": "wisdom",
"author": "wise one",
"pubDate": "11/2/15",
"summary": "ha ha ha"
}
}
]
}
I then decided to check if a matching ID exits before adding
any record. To this effect, I wrote a method, encased it within
a JSon class as follows:
public function ID_Exists($ID){
$file = file_get_contents($this->FileName, true);
$data = json_decode($file, false); //get json in array string format
foreach($data as $child){
foreach($child as $item){
if($item->ID == $ID){
echo 'Exists';
}else{
echo 'Non Existent';
}
}
}
}
I test-ran it like:
$Obj = new JSon('file.json'); //knows what to do
if($Obj->ID_Exists(111)){
//ok ! no problem
}else{
////no problem
}
Here's the output I got:
Undefined property: stdClass::$ID in
C:\Server\wamp\www\Oweb\libs\dmanager.php on line 635
What am I doing wrong? I don't want to use the array
format of json_decode().

Answer 1

Your JSON structure is impossible. Articles is an array which contains a single object which contains the key Article twice - this cannot work.
Your structure needs to be:
{
"Articles": [
{
"ID": 111,
...
},
{
"ID": 222,
...
}
]
}
Which you can traverse using:
$data = json_decode($json);
foreach ($data->Articles as $article) {
if ($article->ID == ..) ..
}