Question

I am trying to parse json using json_decode in php.
It is failing for a url, Can any one tell me why its failing and is there ant alternative to json_decode in php ?

Here is my code

$url='https://espn.go.com/travel/sports/calendar/getList.json?&xhr=1&date=20121027&type=list&query=null&myTeams=';
$html = file_get_html($url);     
$json=json_decode($html,true);

//json is null here

Answer 1

file_get_html is PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser Not default PHP function It should be

 $html = file_get_contents($url);     

Please also Note that the returned JSON has an error of Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded

To Fix THis

$url = 'http://espn.go.com/travel/sports/calendar/getList.json?&xhr=1&date=20121027&type=list&query=null&myTeams=';
$html = file_get_contents($url);
$json = preg_replace('/,\s*([\]}])/m', '$1', utf8_encode($html));
$json = json_decode($json);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($json);

Output

tdClass Object
(
    [nfb] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [events] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => stdClass Object
                                (
                                    [id] => 265911
                                    [time] => 12:00 AM ET
                                    [sportId] => 23
                                    [link] => http://espn.go.com/ncf/team/_/name/
                                    [prevLink] => http://espn.go.com/ncf/preview?gameId=323010002
                                    [recapLink] => http://espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=323010002
                                    [shortSport] => ncaa
                                    [homeId] => 2
                                    [awayId] => 245
                                    [homeScore] => -1

        ... So Many More

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