Question

I need to get an item from the json output however the json contents aren’t always consistent.

For example if I wanted get the value for “name” it would be ['result']['attributes'][0]['name'];

But in the event that the json is delivered as the second example it would be ['result']['attributes'][1]['name'];

{"result":{
    "attributes":[
        {"user":"newb","name":"mike"},
        {"state":"california","city":"los angeles"}
    ]
}}

{"result":{
    "attributes":[
        {"state":"california","city":"los angeles"},
        {"user":"newb","name":"mike"}
    ]
}}

How would I get the “name” value if the index of the array it’s in is unknown?

Answer 1

This will return the index into the attributes array that contains the object with a name attribute of "mike".

function extractNameFromJson($json) {
    foreach ($json->result->attributes as $i => $attribute) {
        if (isset($attribute['name']) && $attribute['name'] == 'mike') {
            return $i;
        }
    }
}

$index = extractNameFromJson($json);
echo $json->result->attributes[$index]['user'];

==> newb