PHP class instance to JSON

Question

I'm trying echo the contents of an object in a JSON format. I'm quite unexperienced with PHP and I was wondering if there is a predefined function to do this (like json_encode()) or do you have to build the string yourself? When Googling "PHP object to JSON", I'm just finding garbage.

class Error {
    private $name;
    private $code;
    private $msg;
    public function __construct($ErrorName, $ErrorCode, $ErrorMSG){
        $this->name = $ErrorName;
        $this->code = $ErrorCode;
        $this->msg = $ErrorMSG;
    }
    public function getCode(){
        return $this->code;
    }
    public function getName(){
        return $this->name;
    }
    public function getMsg(){
        return $this->msg;
    }
    public function toJSON(){
        $json = "";

        return json_encode($json);
    }
}

What I want toJSON to return:

{ name: "the content of $name var", code : 1001, msg : error while doing request}

Answer 1

You're just about there. Take a look at get_object_vars in combination with json_encode and you'll have everything you need. Doing:

json_encode(get_object_vars($error));

should return exactly what you're looking for.

The comments brought up get_object_vars respect for visibility, so consider doing something like the following in your class:

public function expose() {
    return get_object_vars($this);
}

And then changing the previous suggestion to:

json_encode($error->expose());

That should take care of visibility issues.

Answer 2

An alternative solution in PHP 5.4+ is using the JsonSerializable interface.

class Error implements \JsonSerializable
{
    private $name;
    private $code;
    private $msg;

    public function __construct($errorName, $errorCode, $errorMSG)
    {
        $this->name = $errorName;
        $this->code = $errorCode;
        $this->msg = $errorMSG;
    }

    public function jsonSerialize()
    {
        return get_object_vars($this);
    }
}

Then, you can convert your error object to JSON with json_encode

$error = new MyError("Page not found", 404, "Unfortunately, the page does not exist");
echo json_encode($error);

Check out the example here

More information about \JsonSerializable