Can't seem to get data from json

Question

I have a simple web app were I'm getting json from the front-end of the app. I have an object which contains few properties and an array of objects.

It looks like this:

{
"first_name": "test",
"last_name": "test2",
"id": "1234",
"cars": [{
        "model": "car_model",
        "make": "car_maker",
        "year": "1234",
        "owned_since": "3456"
    },
    {
        "model": "car_model",
        "make": "car_maker",
        "year": "1234",
        "owned_since": "3456"
    }
  ]
}

I get this JSON by using JSON.stringify the object on the frontend. I send it with axios has a POST request to my PHP Laravel backend and I want to parse it.

This is what I have:

public function store() { 
    $json = json_decode(request()->getContent(), true);
}

I tried to get my json data like this:

public function store() { 
    $json = json_decoder(request()->getContent, true);
    $first_name = $json -> first_name;
    for($json->cars as $key => $value) {
        
    }
}

But it just won't work. I always get an error that I try to access first_name on the object and it does not exist. I also tried this way:

public function store() { 
$json = json_decoder(request()->getContent);
$first_name = $json['first_name'];
for($json['cars'] as $key => $value) {
    
}
}

But I also got the same problem. What am I doing wrong, I saw few different answers about this topic, but just couldn't get it to work.

Answer 1

If you are attempting to POST the data but can't seem to access the data in back-end, I would suggest you to check for any raw POST data.

You can check for any raw POST data like this:

$postData = file_get_contents('php://input');
print_r($postData);

The reason for this is because PHP doesn't support JSON data when populating $_POST.

It only supports:

• application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• multipart/form-data

(complete answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42507767/2906013 ).