Question

I need to push some JSON data to my website which I would like to read in PHP. What type of file should I make this? A PHP file with the JSON inside of a variable? I understand how to make a text file with JSON encoded data in it, but how do I get this into PHP? Should I use a PHP include with the JSON-encoded data in it assigned to a variable? Or should I read the file from PHP and put the contents into a variable?

Answer 1

Save your json string as plain text, then you can use:

$file = yourfile
$data = file_get_contents($file);
$parsed = json_decode($data);

// compacted:
$parsed = json_decode(file_get_contents($file));

See file_get_contents() and json_decode().

The advantage of doing this (versus storing it in a PHP file then including it) is that now any program or language that understands JSON can read the file.