Making a JSON call from PHP - php

Question

Not sure why but I am not getting anything back from the json call. I echo'ed the content out and pasted to my url bar of my browser and it works. Is there some sort of domain problem here that I need to address?
$connect = open_db();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT search_id, search_term FROM search WHERE search_poi_id IS NULL");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$call = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=".$row["search_term"]."&sensor=false";
$json = file_get_contents($call);
print_r($json);
}
close_db($connect);

Answer 1

file_get_contents() may not always work for external URLs. From php.net:
A URL can be used as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename. See the Supported Protocols and Wrappers for links to information about what abilities the various wrappers have, notes on their usage, and information on any predefined variables they may provide.

Answer 2

So the echo-ing works? Thus, there is valid JSON? And now what is the problem? If you want JSON to an Array, then json_decode() is what you want.
See http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php for more info.

Answer 3

If You want to further process the data, You could do it like this:
$data = array();
$connect = open_db();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT search_id, search_term FROM search WHERE search_poi_id IS NULL");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$call = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=".$row["search_term"]."&sensor=false";
$data[] = json_decode(file_get_contents($call));
}
close_db($connect);
foreach($data as $d)
print_r($d);
With this data which should be an array of arrays You can then do whatever You want...
EDIT:
If file_get_contents() is not working, try this:
$data = array();
$connect = open_db();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT search_id, search_term FROM search WHERE search_poi_id IS NULL");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
$call = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=".$row["search_term"]."&sensor=false";
$handle = fopen($call, "rb");
$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);
$data[] = json_decode($contents);
}
close_db($connect);
foreach($data as $d)
print_r($d);