Retrieve JSON using PHP from a URL - php

Question

I am trying to hit an API and get some JSON back. I can’t seem to figure out what I am doing wrong here. I am getting null as the output.
Here is my PHP code:
<?php
$query_string_full = 'https://api.cityofnewyork.us/calendar/v1/search.htm?app_id=39563317lalaland&app_key=somethingsomething&categories=City%20Government%20Office';
$json = file_get_contents($query_string_full);
$obj = json_decode($json);
echo '<pre>'. json_encode($obj, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT) .'</pre>';
?>

Answer 1

The function file_get_contents doesn’t work with https. You should use the cURL functions instead.
<?php
$query_string_full = 'https://api.cityofnewyork.us/calendar/v1/search.htm?app_id=39563317&app_key=8396021a9bde2aad2eaf8ca9dbeca353&categories=City%20Government%20Office';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $query_string_full);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$json = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$obj = json_decode($json);
echo '<pre>'. json_encode($obj, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT) .'</pre>';
?>

Answer 2

I made this little function to return the json from a few different apis. You need to be using curl.
function exposeJSON ($apiUrl) {
$json_url = $apiUrl;
$ch = curl_init();
// set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $json_url);
// Built in authentication if needed.
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$USER:$PASS");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 0);
// grab URL and pass it to the browser
$response = curl_exec($ch);
$return = json_decode($response[0], true);
// close cURL resource, and free up system resources
curl_close($ch);
return $return;
}
So you could do something like
$apiData = exposeJSON('urltoapi');
echo $apiData; // Should be the json.