Question

If a JSON string has spaces in its name "Some Items" (is there a more accurate term for this?), how do you access it in PHP after using json_decode($json_string) on it? Is this name even required for data returned from an API?

JSON String

{"Some Items":[{"post_id":"1284"},{"post_id":"1392"},{"post_id":"1349"}]}

These doesn’t work

$data = json_decode($json_string);
$data = $data->"Some Items";    // invalid PHP
$data = $data["Some Items"];    // Cannot use object of type stdClass as array

Answer 1

If you don’t like the curly braces idea you can use the dynamic accessor business:

$someitems = "Some Items";
var_dump($data->$someitems);

Or, you could cast $data to an array and use the square brackets:

$data = (array)json_decode($json_str);
var_dump($data['Some Items']);

json_decode has a switch so you don’t need to use casting.

$data = json_decode($json_str, true);
var_dump($data);