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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T06:52:01+00:00

Can someone explain this behavior? in this case: header(Content-type: text/html); echo json_encode(error_101); it works.

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Can someone explain this behavior?

in this case:

header("Content-type: text/html");
echo json_encode("error_101");

it works.

in this other case:

header("Content-type: application/json");
echo json_encode("error_101");

it doesn’t work (infinite loading).

But if I pass an array to json_encode, it works in both ways, so this problem exists only with the json values.

It seems a bug!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The outer most data type in a json text must be an array or object.

    JSON Grammar

    A JSON text is a sequence of tokens. The set of tokens includes
    six structural characters, strings, numbers, and three literal
    names.

    A JSON text is a serialized object or array.

      JSON-text = object / array

    — http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt

    If you pass PHP’s json_encode function a string, then it will output it as a JavaScript encoded string (instead of throwing an error). I consider this to be a bug.

    Presumably, whatever is making the HTTP request to this script is having trouble with the invalid JSON response, but has better error recovery for the invalid HTML.

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