Properly parse a Mongo cursor to PHP - php

Question

When converting a MongoCursor to PHP I use this script. Which was presented here
StackOverflowSO
using the upper method, the structure is same but _id is whereas using the lower script which yields the below included result.
Unfortunately, this results in the actual object being embedded into an array with the _id from Mongo. Like this :
`4eefa79d76d6fd8b50000007 = {
"_id" = {
"$id" = 4eefa79d76d6fd8b50000007;
};
longText = "Error Description";
nCode = dee29fd7e15ce4ab2d3f7dfa7c5d8fc44b27501ad00908771128c920ef276154;
nStatus = Process;
nText = "E12345";
nVType = Type1;
pId = {
"$id" = 4eefa79676d6fd8b50000003;
};
pushDate = "2011-12-20+06%3A07%3A41";
updateFlag = 1;
};`
Since I am passing this object to another service for processing the _id is not known.
How can I convince the PHP Driver to parse the object properly?

Answer 1

Basically what I did was this.
return json_encode(iterator_to_array($cursor));
But this created the aforementioned object which is not what I needed.
I solved it in this way.
$i=0;
foreach($cursor as $item){
$return[$i] = array(
'_id'=>$item['_id'],
'nCode'=>$item['nCode'],
'pId'=>$item['pId'],
'nText'=>$item['nText'],
'longText'=>$item['longText'],
'nStatus'=>$item['nStatus'],
'nVType'=>$item['nVType'],
'pushDate'=>$item['pushDate'],
'updateFlag'=>$item['updateFlag'],
'counter' => $i
);
$i++;
}
return json_encode($return);

Answer 2

If you result is big in order to save RAM you could try this more efficient method:
function outIterator($iterator, $resultName='results')
{
// Efficient MongoCursor Iterator to JSON
// instead of encoding the whole result array to json
// process each item individually
// in order to save memory by not copying the data multiple times
//Start Json Output
header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo '{' . $resultName . ': ['
//Output each item as json if there are results in the iterator
if ($iterator->hasNext()){
foreach ($iterator as $item)
{
echo json_encode ($fixeditem);
if ($iterator->hasNext()) echo ', ';
}
}
//end Json output
echo ']}';
}
$results = $db->collection->find();
outIterator($results);