why $items is Null - php

Question

I have this line in my code:
$item=$page->items;
$page is an array, and its content is as it should be but $item is Null. do you have any idea what could be the reason?
UPDATE:
<?php
search( "Steve Jobs" );
// Submit query to Google Web Search
function search( $query )
{
$url = "https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key=YOUR_KEY&cx=YOUR_SEARCHE_NGINE_ID&q=" . urlencode( $query ) . "&callback=handleResponse&prettyprint=true&num=10";
$result = get_web_page( $url );
// Exception handling
if ( $result['http_code'] == 403 )
echo "... error: daily limit exceeded ...";
if ( $result['errno'] != 0 )
echo "... error: bad url, timeout, redirect loop ...";
if ( $result['http_code'] != 200 )
echo "... error: no page, no permissions, no service ...";
// Get and parse JSON output
$page = $result['content'];
$page = str_replace("// API callback\nhandleResponse(", "", $page);
$page = str_replace(");", "", $page);
$page=json_decode($page, true);
// Print results
$items=$page->items;
var_dump($items);
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($items); $i++)
{
$item = $items[$i];
print("<font size=\"3\">" . "" . $item->htmlTitle . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"black\">" . $item->htmlSnippet . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"green\">" . $item->displayLink . "</font><br>"); print("<br>");
}
}
function get_web_page( $url )
{
$options = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true, // return web page
CURLOPT_HEADER => false, // don't return headers
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true, // follow redirects
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "", // handle all encodings
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => "spider", // who am i
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER => true, // set referer on redirect
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120, // timeout on connect
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 120, // timeout on response
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10, // stop after 10 redirects
);
$ch = curl_init( $url );
curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
// curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);
$content = curl_exec( $ch );
$err = curl_errno( $ch );
$errmsg = curl_error( $ch );
$header = curl_getinfo( $ch );
curl_close( $ch );
$header['errno'] = $err;
$header['errmsg'] = $errmsg;
$header['content'] = $content;
return $header;
}
?>
ANSWER:
this part should be changed since $page is an array.
$items = $page['items'];
foreach ($items as $item)
{
$item = (object) $item;
print("<font size=\"3\">" . "" . $item->htmlTitle . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"black\">" . $item->htmlSnippet . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"green\">" . $item->displayLink . "</font><br>"); print("<br>");
}

Answer 1

Simple question, simple answer:
$item is NULL because $page->items is NULL.
More details:
You're treating $page as an object, but you write it's an array.
Suggestion:
Treat $page as an array instead.
Further information:
The PHP manual has information how to treat a value like an array or like an object. Additionally if you enable warnings on your development box, you will be notified about undefined properties which are always NULL.
Update:
For your concrete code, with a slight modification this should work, just change your for loop a bit:
foreach ($items as $item)
{
$item = (object) $item;
print("<font size=\"3\">" . "" . $item->htmlTitle . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"black\">" . $item->htmlSnippet . "</font><br>");
print("<font size=\"2\" color=\"green\">" . $item->displayLink . "</font><br>"); print("<br>");
}

Answer 2

$page is an array, and its content is as it should be
If $page is an array, you should access it like
$item=$page['items'];
If you provide more info you would get more helpful answer.
EDIT
First, Please make sure you have $page not empty at all.
What you have is $page=json_decode($page, true); that return an associative array and you should use the way I posted above.
If you don't want the array to be returned you should change your json_decode to return object by not passing second argument as true.
$page=json_decode($page); then you are okay with the code you have right now.

Answer 3

If $page is array you do this $page['items']. If it is JSON or XML you can also access ait the way you are doing. like $page->items;