Swift 4 - Error Code=3840 “Garbage at end.” when parsing JSON

Question

Let me preface this question by saying I'm inexperienced with JSON, so please correct me if I say something wrong. I've searched for a few hours and can't find a solution to my question. So, I run some php which should return JSON containing 3 rows worth of data (top three users in a highscore table).

In the php file, I echo each row as such:

while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    echo (json_encode($row));
}

However, when I try to parse the output:

func parseJSON(_ data:Data) {
    var jsonResult = NSArray()
    do {
        jsonResult = try JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: []) as! NSArray
    } catch let error as NSError {
        print(error)
    }
}

The console throws the error:

Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3840 "Garbage at end." UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=Garbage at end.}

Here is the actual output from the server:

{"userid":"8","name":"Sam","highscore":"215","rank":"1"}
{"userid":"9","name":"James","highscore":"210","rank":"2"}
{"userid":"10","name":"Julian","highscore":"162","rank":"3"}

This isn't valid according to jsonlint.com , but I don't know what I can do to solve the problem. Why isn't json_encode() placing commas after the } brackets, and most importantly how do I fix the invalid JSON? Thank you.

Answer 1

You echo multiple JSON strings out, you need to combine your query result into 1 array, then turn it to a single JSON string:

$array = []
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    $array[] = $row;
}

echo json_encode($array);

Your JSON will look something like this:

[
    {"userid":"8","name":"Sam","highscore":"215","rank":"1"},
    {"userid":"9","name":"James","highscore":"210","rank":"2"},
    {"userid":"10","name":"Julian","highscore":"162","rank":"3"}
]