How to parse JSON and access results

Question

If your $result variable is a string json like, you must use json_decode function to parse it as an object or array:

$result = '{"Cancelled":false,"MessageID":"402f481b-c420-481f-b129-7b2d8ce7cf0a","Queued":false,"SMSError":2,"SMSIncomingMessages":null,"Sent":false,"SentDateTime":"\/Date(-62135578800000-0500)\/"}';
$json = json_decode($result, true);
print_r($json);

OUTPUT

Array
(
    [Cancelled] => 
    [MessageID] => 402f481b-c420-481f-b129-7b2d8ce7cf0a
    [Queued] => 
    [SMSError] => 2
    [SMSIncomingMessages] => 
    [Sent] => 
    [SentDateTime] => /Date(-62135578800000-0500)/
)

Now you can work with $json variable as an array:

echo $json['MessageID'];
echo $json['SMSError'];
// other stuff

---

References:

• json_decode - PHP Manual

The main problem with your example code is that the $result variable you use to store the output of curl_exec() does not contain the body of the HTTP response - it contains the value true. If you try to print_r() that, it will just say "1".

The curl_exec() reference explains:

Return Values

Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure. However, if the CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER option is set, it will return the result on success, FALSE on failure.

So if you want to get the HTTP response body in your $result variable, you must first run

curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

After that, you can call json_decode() on $result, as other answers have noted.

On a general note - the curl library for PHP is useful and has a lot of features to handle the minutia of HTTP protocol (and others), but if all you want is to GET some resource or even POST to some URL, and read the response - then file_get_contents() is all you'll ever need: it is much simpler to use and have much less surprising behavior to worry about.

Try:

$result = curl_exec($cURL);
$result = json_decode($result,true);

Now you can access MessageID from $result['MessageID'].

As for the database, it's simply using a query like so:

INSERT INTO `tableName`(`Cancelled`,`Queued`,`SMSError`,`SMSIncommingMessage`,`Sent`,`SentDateTime`) VALUES('?','?','?','?','?');

Prepared.