[php] PHP read and write JSON from file

I have the following JSON in a file list.txt:

{
"bgates":{"first":"Bill","last":"Gates"},
"sjobs":{"first":"Steve","last":"Jobs"}
}

How do I add "bross":{"first":"Bob","last":"Ross"} to my file using PHP?

Here's what I have so far:

<?php

$user = "bross";
$first = "Bob";
$last = "Ross";

$file = "list.txt";

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file));

$json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);

file_put_contents($file, json_encode($json));

?>

Which gives me a Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array on this line:

$json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);

I'm using PHP5.2. Any thoughts? Thanks!

If you want to display the JSON data in well defined formate you can modify the code as:

file_put_contents($file, json_encode($json,TRUE));


$headers = array('http'=>array('method'=>'GET','header'=>'Content: type=application/json \r\n'.'$agent \r\n'.'$hash'));

$context=stream_context_create($headers);

$str = file_get_contents("list.txt",FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH,$context);

$str1=utf8_encode($str);

$str1=json_decode($str1,true);



foreach($str1 as $key=>$value)
{

    echo "key is: $key.\n";

    echo "values are: \t";
        foreach ($value as $k) {

        echo " $k. \t";
        # code...
    }
        echo "<br></br>";
        echo "\n";

}

The sample for reading and writing JSON in PHP:

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file),TRUE);

$json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);

file_put_contents($file, json_encode($json));

You need to make the decode function return an array by passing in the true parameter.

json_decode(file_get_contents($file),true);

When you want to create json format it had to be in this format for it to read:

[ 
  {
    "":"",
    "":[
     {
       "":"",
       "":""
     }
    ]
  }
]

Or just use $json as an object:

$json->$user = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);

This is how it is returned without the second parameter (as an instance of stdClass).

Try using second parameter for json_decode function:

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file), true);

This should work for you to get the contents of list.txt file

$headers = array('http'=>array('method'=>'GET','header'=>'Content: type=application/json \r\n'.'$agent \r\n'.'$hash'));

$context=stream_context_create($headers);

$str = file_get_contents("list.txt",FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH,$context);

$str=utf8_encode($str);

$str=json_decode($str,true);

print_r($str);