Trouble with complex JSON

PHP
1

Hello, I have the following JSON:

{
  "cod": "200",
  "message": 0,
  "cnt": 40,
  "list": [
    {
      "dt": 1609189200,
      "main": {
        "temp": 281.34,
        "feels_like": 276.87,
        "temp_min": 280.51,
        "temp_max": 281.34,
        "pressure": 1020,
        "sea_level": 1020,
        "grnd_level": 1019,
        "humidity": 63,
        "temp_kf": 0.83
      },
      "weather": [
        {
          "id": 802,
          "main": "Clouds",
          "description": "scattered clouds",
          "icon": "03d"
        }
      ],
      "clouds": {
        "all": 28
      },
      "wind": {
        "speed": 3.9,
        "deg": 240
      },
      "visibility": 10000,
      "pop": 0,
      "sys": {
        "pod": "d"
      },
      "dt_txt": "2020-12-28 21:00:00"
    },
    {
      "dt": 1609200000,
      "main": {
        "temp": 279.82,
        "feels_like": 275.24,
        "temp_min": 279.18,
        "temp_max": 279.82,
        "pressure": 1021,
        "sea_level": 1021,
        "grnd_level": 1020,
        "humidity": 70,
        "temp_kf": 0.64
      },
      "weather": [
        {
          "id": 801,
          "main": "Clouds",
          "description": "few clouds",
          "icon": "02n"
        }
      ],
      "clouds": {
        "all": 15
      },
      "wind": {
        "speed": 4.06,
        "deg": 225
      },
      "visibility": 10000,
      "pop": 0,
      "sys": {
        "pod": "n"
      },
      "dt_txt": "2020-12-29 00:00:00"
    },
truncated

I’m trying to get the value of the second weather main, “Clouds”. I’ve tried:

$json["list"][1][0]["weather"]["main"];
$json["list"][1]["weather"]["main"];

but neither have worked. What would be the right answer?

1 Like
2

Basically you go from top to bottom and see which key you need to drill down to the next level:

  1. We need a value from key "list"
  2. "list" contains an array, we want the first element, with key 0
  3. From this array, we want "weather"
  4. "weather" contains an array; from this array we’re interested in the first (and only) element, again, key 0
  5. We’re interested in key "main" of this array

All together, $json["list"][0]['weather][0]['main']

1 Like
3

Interesting. I always go the other way. Find the value i need to get, and walk back to the top of the tree. (Either approach is fine, btw, i’m not suggesting anyone’s wrong here. Just different ways of looking at things.)

1 Like
4

Interesting, never thought of it that way.

5

But you still need to write it from top to bottom (left to right) to access it so I am not sure I get the point. If you wrote it bottom up you would have to keep clicking the cursor to the start of the line. Is that how you are doing it?

6

Pretty much, yup.

$json["main"]
$json["weather"][0]["main"]
$json["list"][0]["weather"][0]["main"]

(I’ve found the habit of writing array-index along with the name of the array at the same time.)

I also find it invaluably helpful with actually complex/large JSON files to push it through a visualizer/treeview generator to make it easier to examine the tree steps. Something like http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/

1 Like
7

Cool JSON tool! :+1:

1 Like
8

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