How can I get part of a JSON response that is returned from a curl POST using PHP

Question

I am posting to an API to get an authorization token. The problem is this token is only activated for 24 hours so I am creating a cronjob that gets a new token every 24 hours.

This is my post using CURL:

<?PHP
// GET auth token
$url = 'https://website.nl';
$data = array("client_id" => "myclientid","client_secret" => "mysecret");

$postdata = json_encode($data);

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postdata);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

echo '<pre>';
print_r ($result);
echo '</pre>';
?>

This returns:

{
"payload": "{\"access_token\":\"my_auth_token\",\"expires_in\":86400,\"token_type\":\"Bearer\"}"
}

How can I get access_token as the only output? I've tried echoing payload but I am not sure how to do it.

echo $result[0]->payload;

echo $result->payload;

Both don't work.

Answer 1

You have forgotten to json_decode

$url = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1';

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json', 'Accept: application/json'));
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

var_dump(json_decode($result));

Please take a look at playground

Answer 2

looks like you're getting a JSON response from the curl request.

With the dummy parameters in the code I could't test it, but I guess the solution would be something like this:

<?PHP
// GET auth token
$url = 'https://website.nl';
$data = array("client_id" => "myclientid","client_secret" => "mysecret");

$postdata = json_encode($data);

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postdata);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$result = json_decode(stripslashes($response));

echo $result->payload->access_token;
?>

Let me know if it works.