Question

I have the following JSON string coming back from a Node JS Service:

"{\"success\":true,\"isavailable\":true}"

When I try to use json_decode() in the PHP I get the following on a var_dump:

string '{"success":true,"isavailable":true}' (length=35)

So, I set about to do the following:

$str = str_replace("\"{", "'{", $str);
$str = str_replace("}\"", "}'", $str);
$str = str_replace('\"','"',$str);

When I do this I get a Syntax Error from Return Last Error and a Value of NULL.

So, what is the correct way to parse this JSON string in PHP?

Answer 1

The correct solution (assuming the input is exactly what is in the OP) is to use trim() to get rid of the leading and trailing double quotes after calling stripslashes():

$str = '"{\"success\":true,\"isavailable\":true}"';
$str = trim( stripslashes( $str), '"');
var_dump( json_decode( $str));

Now, you get:

object(stdClass)#1 (2) { ["success"]=> bool(true) ["isavailable"]=> bool(true) }

I’ve also confirmed that this string appears to be double-encoded, so it can also be properly decoded with:

$str = '"{\"success\":true,\"isavailable\":true}"';
var_dump( json_decode( json_decode( $str)));