Question

I have the following in myfile.php

$json_data = '{"type":"email","msg":"some text"}';

Instead of typing “email” or “some text” I want to concat the php variables $thetype and $themsg to the line before.

How can I do that? No matter what I do I get a syntax error.

I’m trying:

$json_data = '{"type":"+$thetype+","msg":"+$themsg+"}';

But as I say errors galore.

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Your question is a little vague…

Are you looking for this?

$json = array('type' => $thetype, 'msg' => $themsg);
$json_data = json_encode($json);

That will set $json_data to a string like what you described:

<?php

$thetype = 'something';
$themsg = 'something else';
$json = array('type' => $thetype, 'msg' => $themsg);
$json_data = json_encode($json);
var_dump($json_data);

Would print:

string(43) "{"type":"something","msg":"something else"}"

See the PHP manual for json_encode.

You could try and build the string by hand, like this:

$json_data = '{"type":"'. addcslashes($thetype,"\"'\n").'","msg":"'. addcslashes($themsg,"\"'\n").'"}';

But, you’ll generally be better off using json_encode, as it’s designed for this purpose and is much less likely to produce invalid JSON.