Json use in PHP

[tlacaelelrl]

Hello all!

I have a string in this form

$somearray['params'] = "{"week":"42","timezone":"PDT"}"; 

and I am trying to use it like this

echo $somearray['params']['week']; 

But that is not working, I have also tried json decode but that trows me an exception, right now I am doing explode but there must be a better way to do this, can someone point me in the right direction?