php json decode - get a value - php

Question

I'm trying to extract a specific value from json content . Here it is link with the json code http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/m/AreaSearch?jsoncallback=json&lat=41.1131514&lng=-74.0437521 As you may see the the code displayed is
json({items:[{url:"http://fairfield.ebayclassifieds.com/",name:"Fairfield"},{url:"http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/",name:"New York City"}],error:null});
I need to extract the first url which in this case is "http://fairfield.ebayclassifieds.com/" and its name value which is "Fairfield" , I could do it with regex but I would prefer to use json_decode. Unfortunately when I try to decode it doesn't work
$json = getContent("http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/m/AreaSearch?jsoncallback=json&lat=41.1131514&lng=-74.0437521");
$test = json_decode($json, true);

Answer 1

As danp already said, the returned JSON is enclosed in a function call (specified by jsoncallback=json). You cannot get rid of this totally but, just using AreaSearch?jsoncallback=&lat=41.1131514&lng=-74.0437521 removes at least the json at the beginning of the string and you can get rid of the brackets by:
$json = trim(trim($json), "();");
with gives:
{items:[{url:"http://fairfield.ebayclassifieds.com/",name:"Fairfield"},{url:"http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/",name:"New York City"}],error:null}
Unfortunately, the JSON string is not valid. The keys (items, url, ...) have to be enclosed in quotes ". You can easily check that you get a syntax error with json_last_error() (error code 4, JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX).
Update:
According to this question: Invalid JSON parsing using PHP , you can make the JSON string valid with:
$json = preg_replace('/(\w+):/i', '"\1":', $json);
This encloses the keys in quotes.
If the string would be valid, then you could generate an array via:
$a = json_decode($json, true);
which would give you:
Array
(
[items] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[url] => http://fairfield.ebayclassifieds.com/
[name] => Fairfield
)
[1] => Array
(
[url] => http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/
[name] => New York City
)
)
[error] =>
)
So you could get the first URL and name via $a['items'][0]['url'] and $a['items'][0]['name'] resp.
But I repeat, the JSON you get as response is not valid and you cannot parse it with json_decode() in its original form.

Answer 2

Its not valid JSON. The keys should be wrapped inside quotes.
You can validate your json using the excellent JSON Lint site.
This is a valid version of the data returned:
{
"items": [
{
"url": "http://fairfield.ebayclassifieds.com/",
"name": "Fairfield"
},
{
"url": "http://newyork.ebayclassifieds.com/",
"name": "New York City"
}
],
"error": "null"
}