Question

I have a simple value pair array like this :

array(4) (
  [4] => (string) Barcelona
  [3] => (string) Cordoba
  [1] => (string) Granada
  [2] => (string) Jaen
)

I need to encode this to JSON to respond to an AJAX request in the following format :

[{"pk": 4, "name": "Barcelona"},
{"pk": 3, "name": "Cordoba"},
{"pk": 1, "name": "Granada"},
{"pk": 2, "name": "Jaen"}]

If I use :

json_encode($a)

I get the following :

{"4":"Barcelona","3":"Cordoba","1":"Granada","2":"Jaen","0":"Select a province"}

How do I get PHP to format my simple array to include properties in the JSON?

Answer 1

Just create a new array:

$data = array();

foreach($array as $key => $value) {
    $data[] = array('pk' => $key, 'name' => $value);
}

$json = json_encode($data);