PHP read and write JSON from file

Question

I have the following JSON in a file list.txt:

{ "bgates":{"first":"Bill","last":"Gates"}, "sjobs":{"first":"Steve","last":"Jobs"} } 

How do I add "bross":{"first":"Bob","last":"Ross"} to my file using PHP?

Here's what I have so far:

<?php  $user = "bross"; $first = "Bob"; $last = "Ross";  $file = "list.txt";  $json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file));  $json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);  file_put_contents($file, json_encode($json));  ?> 

Which gives me a Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array on this line:

$json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last); 

I'm using PHP5.2. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Answer 1

The clue is in the error message - if you look at the documentation for json_decode note that it can take a second param, which controls whether it returns an array or an object - it defaults to object.

So change your call to

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file), true); 

And it'll return an associative array and your code should work fine.

Answer 2

The sample for reading and writing JSON in PHP:

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents($file),TRUE);  $json[$user] = array("first" => $first, "last" => $last);  file_put_contents($file, json_encode($json));