PHP json decode returns NULL with valid JSON

Question

I have this JSON object stored on a plain text file          MySQL              Server     server             Username     user             Password     pwd             DatabaseName     dbname               Ftp              Server     server             Username     user             Password     pwd             RootFolder     rf               BasePath          bin         NotesAppPath    notas        SearchAppPath    buscar        BaseUrl    http     montemaiztusitio com ar        InitialExtensions              nem mysqlhandler            nem string            nem colour            nem filesystem            nem rss            nem date            nem template            nem media            nem measuring            nem weather            nem currency              MediaPath    media        MediaGalleriesTable    journal media galleries        MediaTable    journal media        Journal              AllowedAdFileFormats                  flv 1                jpg 2                gif 3                png 4                swf 5                      AdColumnId    3            RSSLinkFormat     DOMAIN   notas   YEAR - MONTH - DAY    TITLE              FrontendLayout    Flat            AdPath    ad            SiteTitle    Monte Ma  z  Tu Sitio            GlobalSiteDescription    Peri  dico local de Monte Ma  z             MoreInfoAt    M  s informaci  n aqu    en el Peri  dico local de Monte Ma  z             TemplatePath    templates            WeatherSource    accuweather SAM AR AR005 MONTE MAIZ            WeatherMeasureType    1            CurrencySource    cotizacion-monedas Dolar Euro Real            TimesSingular    vez            TimesPlural    veces            When I try to decode it with json decode    it returns NULL  Why  The file is readable  I tried echoing file get contents   and it worked ok    I ve tested JSON against http   jsonlint com  and it s perfectly valid   What s wrong here   Solution  Looking for answers on Google  I got back to SO  json decode returns NULL after webservice call  My JSON file had the UTF BOM sequence  some binary chars that shouldn t be there   thus  breaking the JSON structure  Went to Hex Editor  erased the bytes  Everything s back to normal  Why has this happened  Because I edited the file using Microsoft Windows  Notepad  Terrible idea

User · Answer

I recommend creating a  json file  ex  config json   Then paste all of your json object and format it  And thus you will be able to remove all of that things that is breaking your json-object  and get clean copy-paste json-object

User · Answer

For me  I had to turn off the error reporting  to get json decode   working correctly  It sounds weird  but true in my case  Because there is some notice printed between the JSON string that I am trying to decode

User · Answer

As stated by J  rgen Math using the preg replace method listed by user2254008 fixed it for me as well   This is not limited to Chrome  it appears to be a character set conversion issue  at least in my case  Unicode -  UTF8  This fixed all the issues i was having   As a future node  the JSON Object i was decoding came from Python s json dumps function   This in turn caused some other unsanitary data to make it across though it was easily dealt with

User · Answer

So  html entity decode   worked for me  Please try this   input   file get contents  quot php   input quot     input   html entity decode  input    event json   json decode  input true

User · Answer

This worked for me   json decode  preg replace     x00- x1F x80- xFF          json string   true

User · Answer

You could try with it    json decode stripslashes   POST  data

User · Answer

If you check the the request in chrome you will see that the JSON is text  so there has been blank code added to the JSON   You can clear it by using    k preg replace    s         k    Then you can use   json decode  k   print r will then show the array

User · Answer

If you are getting json from database  put  mysqli set charset  con   utf8      after defining connection link  con

User · Answer

Just save some one time  I spent 3 hours to find out that it was just html encoding problem  Try this   if get magic quotes gpc         param   stripslashes  row  your column name      else     param    row  your column name        param   json decode html entity decode  param  true    json errors   array  JSON ERROR NONE   gt   No error has occurred   JSON ERROR DEPTH   gt   The maximum stack depth has been exceeded   JSON ERROR CTRL CHAR   gt   Control character error  possibly incorrectly encoded   JSON ERROR SYNTAX   gt   Syntax error      echo  Last error       json errors json last error     PHP EOL  PHP EOL  print r  param

User · Answer

this help you to understand what is the type of error   lt  php    A valid json string  json        Organization    PHP Documentation Team         An invalid json string which will cause an syntax     error  in this case we used   instead of   for quotation  json        Organization    PHP Documentation Team       foreach   json as  string        echo  Decoding       string      json decode  string        switch  json last error              case JSON ERROR NONE              echo   - No errors           break          case JSON ERROR DEPTH              echo   - Maximum stack depth exceeded           break          case JSON ERROR STATE MISMATCH              echo   - Underflow or the modes mismatch           break          case JSON ERROR CTRL CHAR              echo   - Unexpected control character found           break          case JSON ERROR SYNTAX              echo   - Syntax error  malformed JSON           break          case JSON ERROR UTF8              echo   - Malformed UTF-8 characters  possibly incorrectly encoded           break          default              echo   - Unknown error           break             echo PHP EOL      gt

User · Answer

It could be the encoding of the special characters  You could ask json last error   to get definite information      Update  The issue is solved  look at the  Solution  paragraph in the question

User · Answer

you should ensure these points  1  your json string dont have any unknowns characters  2  json string can view from online json viewer  you can search on google as online viewer or parser for json  it should view without any error  3  your string dont have html entities it should be plain text string  for explanation of point 3    html product sizes json htmlentities  html        ProductSizesArr   json decode  html product sizes json true     to  remove htmlentities   function     html product sizes json  html       ProductSizesArr   json decode  html product sizes json true

User · Answer

I ve solved this issue by printing the JSON  and then checking the page source  CTRL CMD   U    print r file get contents  url      Turned out there was a trailing  lt pre gt  tag

User · Answer

It took me like an hour to figure it out  but trailing commas  which work in JavaScript  fail in PHP  This is what fixed it for me  str replace  PHP EOL   quot    quot      quot  quot    quot   quot     JSON

User · Answer

k preg replace    s         k      did it for me  And yes  testing on Chrome  Thx to user2254008

User · Answer

Here you can find little JSON wrapper with corrective actions that addresses BOM and non-ASCI issue  https   stackoverflow com a 43694325 2254935

User · Answer

The most important thing to remember  when you get a NULL result from JSON data that is valid is to use the following command   json last error msg      Ie   var dump json last error msg     string 53   Control character error  possibly incorrectly encoded    You then fix that with    new json   preg replace      cntrl            json

User · Answer

Here is here I solved mine https   stackoverflow com questions 17219916 64923728    The JSON file has to be in UTF-8 Encoding mine was in UTF-8 with BOM which was adding a weird  amp 65279  to the json string output causing json decode   to return null

User · Answer

I had the same problem and I solved it simply by replacing the quote character before decode    json   str replace   amp quot          json    object   json decode  json     My JSON value was generated by JSON stringify function

User · Answer

lt  php   json url    http   api testmagazine com test php type menu    json   file get contents  json url    json str replace                 json    data   json decode  json    echo   lt pre gt    print r  data   echo   lt  pre gt      gt

User · Answer

I also face the same issue    I fix the following steps    1  I print that variable in browser 2  Validate that variable data by freeformatter 3  copy refer that data in further processing after that  I didn t get any issue

User · Answer

Maybe some hidden characters are messing with your json  try this    json   utf8 encode  yourString    data   json decode  json

User · Answer

For my case  it s because of the single quote in JSON string   JSON format only accepts double-quotes for keys and string values   Example    jsonString       hello      PHP         valid value should be    hello    PHP     json   json decode  jsonString   print  json     null   I got this confused because of Javascript syntax  In Javascript  of course  we can do like this   let json         hello   PHP     no quote for key  single quote for string value       OR  json          hello    PHP     single quote for key and value     but later when convert those objects to JSON string   JSON stringify json         hello   PHP

User · Answer

Just thought I d add this  as I ran into this issue today  If there is any string padding surrounding your JSON string  json decode will return NULL   If you re pulling the JSON from a source other than a PHP variable  it would be wise to  trim  it first    jsonData   trim  jsonData

[php] PHP json_decode() returns NULL with valid JSON?

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