Question

I have this json string:

$row['medium'] = "{\"medium\":13|17|1|14, \"medium_sub\":21}";

now I want to make an array from the “medium” part:

$medium_arr = $row['medium']->{'medium'};   

$medium_arr =
explode("|", $medium_arr);

print_r($medium_arr); //This is empty

when I make an array with zero’s like (but I know, this makes no sense)

$row['medium'] = "{\"medium\":1301701014, \"medium_sub\":21}";
$medium_arr = explode("0", $medium_arr);

print_r($medium_arr); //This gives 4 results

how is it possible that I can not use the explode in a proper way?

Answer 1

If that is your real JSON string, it isn’t valid. The pipe-delimited string must be quoted. Using zeros worked because it resulted in a numeric value for medium that didn’t need quotes.

$row['medium'] = "{\"medium\":\"13|17|1|14\", \"medium_sub\":21}";

It can then be decoded properly with json_decode().

var_dump(json_decode($row['medium']));
object(stdClass)#1 (2) {
  ["medium"]=>
  string(10) "13|17|1|14"
  ["medium_sub"]=>
  int(21)
}

$json = json_decode($row['medium']);
$medium_arr = $json->medium;
$medium_arr = explode("|", $medium_arr);
var_dump($medium_arr);

array(4) {
  [0]=>
  string(2) "13"
  [1]=>
  string(2) "17"
  [2]=>
  string(1) "1"
  [3]=>
  string(2) "14"
}

Update

I would add that instead of using a delimited string, if you have the ability to modify the JSON, you ought to use an array for those values in the JSON as:

$row['medium'] = "{\"medium\":[13,17,1,14], \"medium_sub\":21}";
var_dump(json_decode($row['medium]));

// Now they're already an array!
object(stdClass)#1 (2) {
  ["medium"]=>
  array(4) {
    [0]=>
    int(13)
    [1]=>
    int(17)
    [2]=>
    int(1)
    [3]=>
    int(14)
  }
  ["medium_sub"]=>
  int(21)
}