Question

this is a two part question. First, I have code to make a call to graph.facebook.com with parameters that the user can enter. This returns a json when called.

The code is below:

$RAW_DATA = json_decode(file_get_contents($URL_FINAL));

If I go to the URL in my browser everything is fairly organized but if I use a var_dump() it looks like there are extra fields not shown in the browser, is there something wrong with my decoding or is it var_dump() showing things that I don’t see on my browser?

Second, after retrieving the JSON trying to access the subfields of data within it have proven to be problem.

For example:

     {
   "data": [
      {
         "id": "11111111_111111111",
         "from": {
            "name": "John",
            "id": "111111111"
         },
         "story": "John shared We Are Change's photo.",
         "picture": "http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/35552_10151311513538690_352701444_s.jpg",
         "link": "http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151311513538690&set=a.10150159213018690.338979.86518833689&type=1",
         "name": "Timeline Photos",
         "caption": "Happy election day everybody!",
         "properties": [
            {
               "name": "By",
               "text": "We Are Change",
               "href": "http://www.facebook.com/WeAreChange.org?ref=stream"
            }
         ] 
}

This is what the URL returns, how would I pull just the ‘story’ from this?

I have tried several different syntax styles but the only one that returns anything is $RAW_DATA->{'data'}; and this just prints ‘Array’. As soon as I try to go into the next layer I can’t get anything to print.

Answer 1

That’s because “data” is an array of objects (or associative arrays).

$RAW_DATA->{'data'}[0];

Would work if you always knows it only has one element, otherwise you should loop through $RAW_DATA->{‘data’}.

Or to simplify:

$RAW_DATA['data'][0]['story']