Decoding JSON after sending using PHP cUrl - php

Question

I've researched everywhere and cannot figure this out.
I am writing a test cUrl request to test my REST service:
// initialize curl handler
$ch = curl_init();
$data = array(
"products" => array ("product1"=>"abc","product2"=>"pass"));
$data = json_encode($data);
$postArgs = 'order=new&data=' . $data;
// set curl options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postArgs);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://localhost/store/rest.php');
// execute curl
curl_exec($ch);
This works fine and the request is accepted by my service and $_Post is populated as required, with two variables, order and data. Data has the encoded JSON object. And when I print out $_Post['data'] it shows:
{"products":{"product1":"abc","product2":"pass"}}
Which is exactly what is expected and identical to what was sent in.
When I try to decode this, json_decode() returns nothing!
If I create a new string and manually type that string, json_decode() works fine!
I've tried:
strip_tags() to remove any tags that might have been added in the http post
utf8_encode() to encode the string to the required utf 8
addslashes() to add slashes before the quotes
Nothing works.
Any ideas why json_decode() is not working after a string is received from an http post message?
Below is the relevant part of my processing of the request for reference:
public static function processRequest($requestArrays) {
// get our verb
$request_method = strtolower($requestArrays->server['REQUEST_METHOD']);
$return_obj = new RestRequest();
// we'll store our data here
$data = array();
switch ($request_method) {
case 'post':
$data = $requestArrays->post;
break;
}
// store the method
$return_obj->setMethod($request_method);
// set the raw data, so we can access it if needed (there may be
// other pieces to your requests)
$return_obj->setRequestVars($data);
if (isset($data['data'])) {
// translate the JSON to an Object for use however you want
//$decoded = json_decode(addslashes(utf8_encode($data['data'])));
//print_r(addslashes($data['data']));
//print_r($decoded);
$return_obj->setData(json_decode($data['data']));
}
return $return_obj;
}

Answer 1

Turns out that when JSON is sent by cURL inside the post parameters & quot; replaces the "as part of the message encoding. I'm not sure why the preg_replace() function I tried didn't work, but using html_entity_decode() removed the &quot and made the JSON decode-able.

Answer 2

old:
$return_obj->setData(json_decode($data['data']));
new:
$data = json_decode( urldecode( $data['data'] ), true );
$return_obj->setData($data);
try it im curious if it works.