Question

i have this variable $a

var_dump($a)

 array(3) { [0]=> string(10) "designer" [1]=> string(8) "director" [2]=> string(10) "Freelancer"} 

i am sending this in ajax(jquery)

jquery

  data: 'form=<?php echo json_encode($a); ?>',

and in the other php file i am doing

$send = $_POST[form];

$b = json_encode($send);

$c = json_decode($b, true);
var_dump($c);

the output will be:

string(xx) "[\"designer\",\"director\",\"Freelancer\"]" 

but, echo $c[0] show this: [ and should be “designer“

Any help ?

EDIT: already tried too

$send = $_POST['form'];

$c = json_decode($send, true);

var_dump($c);

output: `null`

Answer 1

Because $c is actually the string “[\”designer\”,\”director\”,\”Freelancer\”]”, and not the array ["designer", "director", "Freelancer"]. It looks like you’re calling json_encode on your content twice, and json_decode once.

1. form=<?php echo json_encode($a); ?> will encode your content once,
   before sending it over the wire.
2. $send = $_POST[form]; will get that content (already
   json_encoded).
3. $b = json_encode($send); will encode that same content a second
   time.
4. $c = json_decode($b, true); will decode it.

This will leave you with your content still encoded. I’m not quite sure what the point of step 3 is, and it looks to me that removing it should solve your problem.

EDIT:

Since you’ve updated the question stating that you get null if you try the proposed solution, according to the PHP documentation for json_decode:

NULL is returned if the json cannot be decoded or if the encoded data
is deeper than the recursion limit.

You should make sure that the data is set to exactly what you want, as I don’t think your recursion level is too deep in this case (from the data you’ve given, it appears as if there is none whatsoever).