Question

I have to parse this JSON in PHP so that for each address, I get the address, line and city information and store it in the database. The way that I plan to implement is like this:

For each key in the json string, check if it begins with address,
If yes, split the string based on '_' and get the index count. 
Get line1, line2, city for this index count. 

Is there a better way to do this?

(Note that the index count can be random)

{
  "route": "A",

  "address_0": "A0",
  "line1_0": "L1_0",
  "line2_0": "L2_0",
  "city_0": "city_0",

  "address_1": "A1",
  "line1_1": "L1_1",
  "line2_1": "L2_1",
  "city_1": "city_1",

  "address_2": "A2",
  "line1_2": "L1_2",
  "line2_2": "L2_2",
  "city_2": "city_2",

}

Answer 1

Just iterate over the data and assign to an array:

$route = array();
foreach(json_decode($json) as $p => $v)
{
   list($k, $i) = explode('_', $p, 2) + array(NULL, NULL);
   if (NULL === $i) {
       $rc =& $route["$k $v"];
       continue;
   }
   $rc[$i][$k] = $v;
}
unset($rc);

gives:

array(1) {
  ["route A"]=>
  array(3) {
    [0]=>
    array(4) {
      ["address"]=>
      string(2) "A0"
      ["line1"]=>
      string(4) "L1_0"
      ["line2"]=>
      string(4) "L2_0"
      ["city"]=>
      string(6) "city_0"
    }
    [1]=>
    array(4) {
      ["address"]=>
      string(2) "A1"
      ["line1"]=>
      string(4) "L1_1"
      ["line2"]=>
      string(4) "L2_1"
      ["city"]=>
      string(6) "city_1"
    }
    [2]=>
    array(4) {
      ["address"]=>
      string(2) "A2"
      ["line1"]=>
      string(4) "L1_2"
      ["line2"]=>
      string(4) "L2_2"
      ["city"]=>
      string(6) "city_2"
    }
  }
}

Demo