Correctly Format JSON Output in PHP

Question

I am retrieving the name of an employee from one API and need to format some JSON to transmit it over an outgoing api. I need my output to look like this.

A {"employees":[{"name":"Charles Johnson"}]}

Right now my output looks like this:

B {"employees":"[{\"name\":\"Robert Johnson\"}]"}

based on the following code:

$employee = "Robert Johnson";//string retrieved from API
$return = json_encode(array(array('name'=>$employee)));

echo json_encode(array('employees'=>$return));

How can I convert B so it looks like A. Note I would prefer not to alter the last line (echo...) as it is used for various other things as well. 'd like to prep $return so that it echoes out in the form of A.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

Json encode is required only once after preparing all the data. Please find the below code hope it will help you.

$employee = "Robert Johnson";//string retrieved from API
$return =array(array('name'=>$employee));

echo json_encode(array('employees'=>$return));

Answer 2

You encode JSON data twice so just do it once, in last line that outputs it.