PHP Serialize an empty Associative Array

Question

I want to dump an associative array to file using PHP. Sometimes the result can be empty and in this case I want the content of the file be exactly : { } so that I can process all files in the same way.

However, I can only initialize a simple array in PHP, and so the output in the file is always this : [ ]. I already tried adding a dummy entry to the associative array and then deleting the entry again so that the array is empty, but then again [ ] is the output in the file.

Answer 1

The json_encode function has an option that will coerce arrays into objects where ever contextually appropriate - i.e. associative arrays but this also includes empty arrays, for example:

$array = array(
    'foo' => array(),
    'bar' => array()
);

echo json_encode($array, JSON_FORCE_OBJECT);  // {"foo":{},"bar":{}}