Retrieving JSON response using HTTPful library for Laravel - php

Question

I am currently building a e-mail client (inbound and outbound sending) using Mandrill as the e-mail sending / inbound service and Laravel 3.x.
In order to send messages, I am using the HTTPful bundle with the Mandrill using the following code in my mail/compose POST method.
$url = 'https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/send.json';
$data = array(
'key' => '{removedAPIkey}',
'message' => array (
'to' => array( array( "email" => $_to ) ),
'from_name' => Auth::user()->name,
'from_email' => Auth::user()->email,
'subject' => $_subject,
'html' => $_body
),
'async' => true
);
$request = Httpful::post($url)->sendsJson()->body($data)->send();
Link to better formatted code above: http://paste.laravel.com/m79
Now as far as I can tell from the API log, the request is correctly made (with the expected JSON) and a response of the following format is sent back:
[
{
"email": "test#test.com",
"status": "queued",
"_id": "longmessageID"
}
]
However, what I am trying to do is access the response from the request (specifically the _id attribute), which is in JSON. Now as far as I'm aware, the HTTPful class should do this automatically (using json_decode()). However, accessing:
$request->_id;
is not working and I'm not entirely sure how to get this data out (it is required so I can record this for soft-bounce, hard-bounce and rejection messages for postmaster-like functionality)
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Edit
Using the following code, results in the mail being sent but an error returned:
$url = 'https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/send.json';
$data = array(
'key' => '{removedAPIkey}',
'message' => array (
'to' => array( array( "email" => $_to ) ),
'from_name' => Auth::user()->name,
'from_email' => Auth::user()->email,
'subject' => $_subject,
'html' => $_body
),
'async' => true
);
$request = Httpful::post($url)->sendsJson()->body($data)->send();
if ( $request[0]->status == "queued" ) {
$success = true;
}
Results in an exception being thrown: Cannot use object of type Httpful\Response as array

Answer 1

I must say, a huge thanks to Aiias for his assistance. I managed to fix this myself (I must have spent hours looking at this). For anyone who wants to know, the HTTPful bundle has a body array, where the response is kept. Therefore, the code below works:
$url = 'https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/send.json';
$data = array(
'key' => '{removedAPIkey}',
'message' => array (
'to' => array( array( "email" => $_to ) ),
'from_name' => Auth::user()->name,
'from_email' => Auth::user()->email,
'subject' => $_subject,
'html' => $_body
),
'async' => true
);
$request = Httpful::post($url)->sendsJson()->body($data)->send();
if ( $request->body[0]->status == "queued" ) {
$success = true;
}
Again, huge thanks to Aiias for clearing some major confusion up for me!