Help printing readable JSON to screen via php api

[jwallaceni]

Hi,

Basically i am currently developing a text messaging application that operates using an email to sms gateway. I have the app mostly built, but am currently stuck due to a lack of understanding on JSON.

Via an API on the email to sms gateway i am able to retrieve how many credits are currently left in the system and display it on my app. Currently, it looks something like this when echo’d to screen:

{“balance”:{“sms”:46,“mms”:0},“status”:“success”}

The thing is the only figure i require here is the “46”… I simply want to be able to echo the number of sms credits available to the screen rather than the whole json string. Can anyone help with how to do this?

[jwallaceni]

Also, i would ideally like to be able to process this through PHP so that i can run if statements on how many credits are left, if ($credits<=1) {} for example

[Mittineague]

Hi jwallaceni, welcome to the forum,

That is JavaScriptObjectNotation
viewed another way

$response = {
             "balance": {
                          "sms":46,
                          "mms":0
                          },
           "status":"success"}

So what you want is $response.balance.sms

Where $response (or whatever you’ve named it) is an object with 2 properties, the first property, “balance” is an object with 2 properties, “sms” and “mms”

[jwallaceni]

OK by the looks of it you have my situation down perfectly, the variable is called $response also. I have tried the following:

$response = $response.balance.sms;

echo $response;

But i still dont think im grasping it correctly. Is there a way to simply echo the figure without involving jquery?

[Mittineague]

You don’t necessarily need to use jQuery, but unless the API allows for a way to return only that you need to “drill down” to it somewhere.

You could use plain JavaScript to do this easily enough. Or if the JSON is going to a PHP file you could do it there and have PHP return only the value you’re interested in.

[StarLion]

($response.balance.sms is not valid notation in PHP. . is the concatenation operator, not the member-selector.)

If you have $response as your string, [FPHP]json_decode[/FPHP] it, and then you can access it with standard PHP object notation: $object->balance->sms;