Fastest way to retrieve part from JSON in my case - php

Question

Now, I use strstr to get data from external JSON file. I'm not sure if it's the fastest way to do that what I want and I can't test because json_decode don't work in my code.
$before = '"THIS":"';
$after = '","date"';
$data = strstr(substr($url, strpos($url, $before) + strlen($before)), $after, true)
and with json_decode:
$address = file_get_contents('http://json.link/?something=Hello');
$data = json_decode($address);
echo $data->data->THIS;
Now, when I replace my first code with second I get:
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object
All my code:
$text = "a lot of text";
$text_split = array(0 => '');
$number = 0;
$words = explode(' ', $text);
foreach($words as $word)
{
if(strlen($text_split[$number]) + strlen($word) + 1 > 500)
{
++$number;
$text_split[$number] = '';
}
$text_split[$number] .= $word.' ';
}
foreach($text_split as $texts)
{
$text_encode = rawurlencode($texts);
$address = file_get_contents('http://json.link/?something='.$text_encode);
$data = json_decode($address);
echo $data->data->THIS;
}
What should in do in that case? Keep using strstr or replace all code to work with json_decode (maybe because execution time is faster?)? If the second option, how I can make json_decode work here? Thanks!
... and sorry for bad english.
LE:
If I replace $address = file_get_contents('http://json.link/?something='.$text_encode); with $address = file_get_contents('http://json.link/?something=Hello'); I get VALID result for "Hello" text but 10 times. I guess because it's in a foreach.

Answer 1

json_decode is the suggested method to work with JSON data. Here I think you are trying to access an invalid property in JSON object.
$data = json_decode($address);
echo $data->data->THIS;
I guess you need $data->date instead of $data-data?

Answer 2

you have to access the specific key value like this
$json = '{"success":true,"msg":"success","data":{"THIS":"thing I need","date":"24.03.2014","https":false}}';
$d=json_decode($json,true);
echo $d['data']['THIS'];