Question

This has got me completely stumped:

print_r($json);
echo json_encode($json);

output:

Array
(
    [query] => dia
    [suggestions] => Array
        (
            [0] => Diana Johnson
            [1] => Diane Abbott
        )

)
{"query":"dia","suggestions":[null,null]}

What on earth is going wrong?

edit Just to add to the general wtf-ery of this, here’s another sample:

Array
(
    [query] => david
    [suggestions] => Array
        (
            [0] => David Cameron
            [1] => David Amess
            [2] => David Anderson
            [3] => David Blunkett
            [4] => David Burrowes
        )

)
{"query":"david","suggestions":["David Cameron",null,null,null,null]}

Answer 1

This looks like an autocomplete script. I assume your results are loaded from a database, are you sure they’re utf-8? If you cannot replicate this functionality by hardcoding the array, then it’s probably an encoding issue.

According to http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php, “This function only works with UTF-8 encoded data.”

You can also use http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-last-error.php to see the last error.