Accessing JSON array after json_decode/multidimensional array

Question

I'm pulling in a search from the Twitter api, fetching the data with file_get_contents and then passing to json_decode which give me this array structure.

{"results":[
     {
     "from_user":"A-user-name",
     "from_user_id":457304735,
     "text":"Ich R U #BoysNoize #SuperRola",

          "entities":{

                 "urls":[{
                        "url":"http:\/\/t.co\/WZnUf68j",
                        "expanded_url":"http:\/\/instagr.am\/p\/Vz4Nnbnjd6\/",
                        }]

     }]
]

This repeats for every tweet pulled, Now I can access the user name and text using a foreach loop and assigning every instance of results to a variable, then pulling data from the variable.

foreach($jsonArr['results'] as $item){    

// Takes the Array jsonArr and for every results heading creates an $item

    $user = mysql_real_escape_string($item['from_user']);
    $text = mysql_real_escape_string($item['text']);

This saves the correct variables OK, But I can't seem to get the the data within the entities array within the results. If I print out the Entities var like the username or text I get

ArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArray

So It holds the arrays for each results returned but how on earth do I access it, I've been messing around with a few other methods I know for accessing array data but they all seem to fall flat. Any help with how to get at these values, or integrate them with the foreach would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Assuming that you've chosen to decode the JSON as a multi-dimensional array, rather than as objects:

foreach ($results as $tweet) {
    $user = $tweet["from-user"];
    $text = $tweet["text"];

    $entities = $tweet["enities"];
    $urls = $entities["urls"];

    foreach ($urls as $url) {
        echo $url["expanded_url"];
    }
}

et cetera

Answer 2

Array
(
    [results] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [entities] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => stdClass Object
                                (
                                    [urls] => Array
                                        (
                                            [0] => stdClass Object
                                                (
                                                    [expanded_url] => http://instagr.am/p/Vz4Nnbnjd6/
                                                    [url] => http://t.co/WZnUf68j
                                                )

                                        )

                                )

                        )

                    [from_user] => A-user-name
                    [from_user_id] => 457304735
                    [text] => Ich R U #BoysNoize #SuperRola
                )

        )

)

Accessing url:

$json_array['results'][0]->entities[0]->urls[0]->url;

Helpful code:

<?php

$json ='{ "results" : [ { "entities" : 
[ { "urls" : [ { "expanded_url" : "http://instagr.am/p/Vz4Nnbnjd6/",
                    "url" : "http://t.co/WZnUf68j"
                  } ] } ],
        "from_user" : "A-user-name",
        "from_user_id" : 457304735,
        "text" : "Ich R U #BoysNoize #SuperRola"
      } ] }';
$json_array = (array)(json_decode($json));
echo '<pre>';
 //print_r($json_array);

 echo $json_array['results'][0]->entities[0]->urls[0]->url;

?>

Answer 3

Just do a print_r($jsonArr); and you will be able to work with your decoded json.