Why json_decode doesn't work for me?

Question

I'm a little confused here. if I pass a variable to json_decode, it doesn't work:

$stringJSON = $_GET['jsonstring'];  
echo $stringJSON;
$stringObject = json_decode($stringJSON);
var_export($stringObject);

The first echo correctly shows me the JSON string I passed, e.g.

{\"Items\":[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"],\"Name\":\"Christmas\"}

The second echo shows NULL. So I grab the string from the first echo and write the following code:

$stringObject = json_decode("{\"Items\":[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"],\"Name\":\"Christmas\"}");
var_export ($stringObject);

And what do you say, it shows me the correctly decoded array. The string is absolutely the same, I even kept the escape characters. Or maybe they are the problem?

Answer 1

Looks like your server has magic_quotes_gpc enabled. Either disable it or run $stringJSON through stripslashes() before using it.

$stringJSON = get_magic_quotes_gpc() ?
    stripslashes($_GET['jsonstring']) : $_GET['jsonstring'];

Answer 2

This

[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"]

needs to be

[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"}]

You are missing the closing }