PHP JSON decode Amazon SNS

Question

I'm having issues decoding certain Amazon SNS notifications using PHP's json_decode (5.3.10-1ubuntu3.5) and have not yet been able to figure out why despite the json being marked as valid using jsonlint.com. Can someone point me in the correct direction? Here are two examples:

{
  "Type" : "Notification",
  "MessageId" : "8q787fm3-f7fe-5sf4-863e-331bre627f24",
  "TopicArn" : "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:1234567890:ses-bounces-topic",
  "Message" : "{\"notificationType\":\"Bounce\",\"bounce\":{\"reportingMTA\":\"dns; a193-136.smtp-out.amazonses.com\",\"bounceType\":\"Transient\",\"bouncedRecipients\":[{\"emailAddress\":\"email@example.com\",\"status\":\"5.0.0\",\"diagnosticCode\":\"smtp; 5.3.0 - Other mail system problem 571-'5.7.1 Message contains spam or virus or sender is blocked : 17624:1603463706|734463C' (delivery attempts: 0)\",\"action\":\"failed\"}],\"bounceSubType\":\"General\",\"timestamp\":\"2013-03-11T22:15:21.000Z\",\"feedbackId\":\"0000013d5b854265-18f16a12-8a99-11e2-aa8d-81a75f1af476-000000\"},\"mail\":{\"timestamp\":\"2013-03-11T22:14:51.000Z\",\"source\":\"otheremail@example.com\",\"messageId\":\"0000013d5b853e2a-820173e1-095e-4h91-9c91-03876f970534-000000\",\"destination\":[\"email@example.com\"]}}",
  "Timestamp" : "2013-03-11T22:14:52.935Z",
  "SignatureVersion" : "1",
  "Signature" : "bY5gjFMgrVnK+4Qw867qHR0cLDXlgZmYb6EdiDAd4hNHMDab4J5MdldldEQwkSFslkdkDsdowlsKAdQvZ9HZwSmEcTRpwgg3Fpp5R/efVnTdUVfJkmBcnhijhWHpxSdEqN9m5vgPhg=",
  "SigningCertURL" : "https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-f3ecfb7224c72n3fe7bp5KDMMX6de32f.pem",
  "UnsubscribeURL" : "https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&SubscriptionArn=arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:1234567890:ses-bounces-topic:73m9983aa-0f4b-4r87-a5d7-d43pb99c91af"
}

And

{
  "Type" : "Notification",
  "MessageId" : "3c91t096-h331-5dm1-9u22-8822c3cdb7e8",
  "TopicArn" : "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:1234567890:ses-bounces-topic",
  "Message" : "{\"notificationType\":\"Bounce\",\"bounce\":{\"reportingMTA\":\"dsn; aws-ses-mta-svc-iad-1d-i-ccb81arf.us-east-1.amazon.com\",\"bounceType\":\"Permanent\",\"bouncedRecipients\":[{\"emailAddress\":\"email@example.com\",\"status\":\"5.1.1\",\"diagnosticCode\":\"smtp; 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try\\\\n550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or\\\\n550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at\\\\n550 5.1.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 ht9si5931660qab.18 - gsmtp\",\"action\":\"failed\"}],\"bounceSubType\":\"General\",\"timestamp\":\"2013-03-08T16:15:40.000Z\",\"feedbackId\":\"0000015m4ac15133-4b74a3sf-890b-11e2-bf3f-53yadf2149d9-000000\"},\"mail\":{\"timestamp\":\"2013-03-08T16:15:39.000Z\",\"source\":\"otheremail@example.com\",\"messageId\":\"0000017d44c94bnf-a333d68b-8bed-4a2b-bdbf-4156zb5cdd9f-000000\",\"destination\":[\"example@sample.com\"]}}",
  "Timestamp" : "2013-03-08T16:15:40.472Z",
  "SignatureVersion" : "1",
  "Signature" : "pYxerRQVHo0kgbLh4a/nri8Rveqdlb/CbPuXEkdCaBt7ulJ5G5gU6TYaUM94iFnCTBC9+5dLZRvydIsemFCiUQUArsh30tcgzBbb2rb7cuZoi09T4bYByN9FY=",
  "SigningCertURL" : "https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-f3mcfb7224c7235fe7bb5f79f96dd52p.pem",
  "UnsubscribeURL" : "https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&SubscriptionArn=arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:1234567890:ses-bounces-topic:7p37c3za-0h4b-4j87-a5i7-d42cb90c9maf"
}

I see that jsonlint.com says it's valid JSON I just can't figure out why when I pass the contents of the RAW post to json_decode it's returning null. For the first level of JSON I'm using:

$result = json_decode($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);
if (!empty($result)) { }

I should add per E_ERROR's question I definitely have json_decode as some/most of the notifications are parsed correctly. I'm just getting a subset that for some reason aren't.

UPDATE: It's been a while so my head is not in this code anymore but to answer Hasan's question. Here is the working code and my comment about it.

// json_decode does not like single quotes in the response so strip them here
$notification = str_replace("'", '', $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);
$result = json_decode($notification);

Hope this helps!

Answer 1

This is a really old question, but I had the same problem decoding JSON received from Amazon SNS. json_decode () was not working and json_last_error () was returning JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX.

After trying (and failing) with string replacement, I decided to disable "Include Original Headers" in Amazon SES (which sends the bounce notification to Amazon SNS). Suddenly everything worked fine.

For completeness, my PHP code to decode the string is as follows:

$decoded = json_decode (trim ($jsonFromAWS), true);
if (is_array ($decoded) && isset ($decoded['Message']) && !is_array ($decoded['Message']) && $decoded['Message'] !== '')
{
    $decoded['Message'] = json_decode (trim ($decoded['Message']), true);
}

Hope that helps anyone else bumping into this question!

Answer 2

Check this link.

Receiving Amazon SNS Messages in PHP