Question

I’ve been having some issues trying to use cURL and JSON to print out some JSON results on my page. Here’s my code as it stands just now…

    // create curl resource
    $ch = curl_init();

    // set url
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.wardgraphics.com/moviepickr/collection.php?user=1");

    //return the transfer as a string
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

    // $output contains the output string
    $output = json_decode(curl_exec($ch));

    foreach($output AS $movie) {

    // echo the output
    echo "<p>This movie title is: " . $movie->overview . "</p>";

    }

    // close curl resource to free up system resources
    curl_close($ch);

When I ouput all i get is:


Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /data/26/2/45/90/2371416/user/2602457/htdocs/moviepickr/tester.php on line 15


here’s an example of what’s being outputted by the php file “collection.php?user=1”:


{"title":"Shaun of the Dead","released":"2004-09-24","trailer":"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfBewQPFdKE","runtime":95,"overview":"Shaun of the Dead is a humorous homage to Zombie movies from director Edgar Wright; an outrageous romantic comedy with zombies.","poster":"http://cf1.imgobject.com/posters/089/4e816b465e73d6767f000089/shaun-of-the-dead-cover.jpg"}


connection.php file:

    header('Content-type: application/json');

mysql_connect('serv', 'user', 'password');  
mysql_select_db('name');

include('databasefile.php');

//'json' is set as default return format

$tmdb = new TMDb('key');

$check_collection = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM collections WHERE user_id = '$_REQUEST[user]' ORDER BY id");
while ($looped = mysql_fetch_assoc($check_collection)) {


$id = $looped[movie_id];

//Search Movie with other return format than the default

$json_movies_result = $tmdb->getMovie($id);

// Convert JSON to array of objects

$movies = json_decode($json_movies_result);

foreach ($movies AS $movie) 

{

    foreach($movie->posters as $poster) 

    {

        if ($poster->image->size == 'cover') {

        $poster_url = $poster->image->url;

        }

    }

    $id = $movie->id;

    $json_extra = $tmdb->getMovie($id);

    $extra_info = json_decode($json_extra);

    foreach($extra_info AS $extra) 

    {

        // convert json results into new php array

        $collection_array = array("title" => $movie->original_name, "released" => $movie->released, "trailer" => $extra->trailer, "runtime" => $extra->runtime, "overview" => $movie->overview, "poster" => $poster_url);

    }

}

echo json_encode($collection_array);

}

This may be simple for those of you that know your stuff, let me know if it is.

Thanks a ton!

Answer 1

Well the result returned by wardgraphics.com is an object not an array. So you can’t do foreach on it (unless you implement iterator interface). Try printing just $output->overview

I took a look at your coolection.php output. All you need to do is to put all the movies in the array before you encode it in JSON eg.

$movies = array();
$movies[] = $movie1;
$movies[] = $movie2;
$movies[] = $movie3;
echo json_encode($movies);

instead of

echo json_encode($movie1);
echo json_encode($movie2);
echo json_encode($movie3);

If you dont have the access to coolection.php you can get individual objects by splitting the output eg:

$objects = explode('}', $output);
foreach ($objects as $object){
  $movie = json_decode($object.'}');
  echo "<p>This movie title is: " . $movie->overview . "</p>";
}

This is not perfect as this method will fail if any data inside the JSON object contains character “}”. So to be safe it is better to use regular expressions here with proper check for escapes.

Here’s amended code of your php file:

header('Content-type: application/json');
mysql_connect('serv', 'user', 'password');  
mysql_select_db('name');

include('databasefile.php');
//'json' is set as default return format
$tmdb = new TMDb('key');
$check_collection = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM collections WHERE user_id = '$_REQUEST[user]' ORDER BY id");
$allMovies = array(); // Initializing a variable to hold all movies
while ($looped = mysql_fetch_assoc($check_collection)) {
    $id = $looped[movie_id];
    //Search Movie with other return format than the default
    $json_movies_result = $tmdb->getMovie($id);
    // Convert JSON to array of objects
    $movies = json_decode($json_movies_result);
    foreach ($movies AS $movie) 
    {
        foreach($movie->posters as $poster) 
        {
            if ($poster->image->size == 'cover') {
                $poster_url = $poster->image->url;
            }
        }
        $id = $movie->id;
        $json_extra = $tmdb->getMovie($id);
        $extra_info = json_decode($json_extra);
        foreach($extra_info AS $extra) 
        {
            // convert json results into new php array
            $collection_array = array("title" => $movie->original_name, "released" => $movie->released, "trailer" => $extra->trailer, "runtime" => $extra->runtime, "overview" => $movie->overview, "poster" => $poster_url);
        }
    }
    $allMovies[] = $collection_array; // adding movie to the array of all movies
}
echo json_encode($allMovies); // printing json encoded array of all movies

Now you can use your initial script to display results.