Comments on: Format JSON with PHP

By: Ways to Format and View JSON Online - WittySparks

Ways to Format and View JSON Online - WittySparks — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:11:04 +0000

[…] Format JSON with PHP […]

By: drapeko

drapeko — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:44:45 +0000

Thanks for the code, quite useful when you are lazy to do yourself :)

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:43:51 +0000

Hi Davev,
your Code from 2009/10/03 produces only errors if I copy/paste it. Could you Post it without all this typing errors? It would be very kind of you.

By: Davey Shafik

Davey Shafik — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:29:50 +0000

This modified version will ignore special characters in quoted strings.

public static function indent($json) {

$result = ‘’;
$pos = 0;
$strLen = strlen($json);
$indentStr = ‘ ‘;
$newLine = “\n”;

for($i = 0; $i <= $strLen; $i ) {

// Grab the next character in the string
$char = substr($json, $i, 1);

// Skip quoted keys and values
if ($char '"' || $char "'") {
echo "Found $char at position $i";
$lookfor = $char;
for ($i = $i 1; $i <= $strLen; $i ) {
$result .= $char;
$char = substr($json, $i, 1);
if ($char == $lookfor) {
echo " and closing $char at $i";
break;
}
}
}

// If this character is the end of an element,
// output a new line and indent the next line
if($char '}' || $char ']') {
$result .= $newLine;
$pos —;
for ($j=0; $j<$pos; $j ) {
$result .= $indentStr;
}
}

// Add the character to the result string
$result .= $char;

// If the last character was the beginning of an element,
// output a new line and indent the next line
if ($char ',' || $char '{' || $char '[') {
$result .= $newLine;
if ($char '{' || $char == '[') {
$pos ;
}
for ($j = 0; $j < $pos; $j ) {
$result .= $indentStr;
}
}
}

return $result;
}

By: Yukulélé

Yukulélé — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:40:19 +0000

if their is “{[}]” chars in a string eements, theiy ar indented
exemple :
indent(‘a{23]”}’);

{
  “a”:1,
  “b”:”[
    1{

    }23
  ]”
}

By: Mithun Dhali

Mithun Dhali — Sat, 16 May 2009 05:49:02 +0000

There is an major issue with the code. It does not take into consideration string escaping.

If a string value (inside quotes) has ‘,’ (COMMA) in it, it simply puts a newline after it. When doing an eval, this will give an unterminated error.

Example input:
code”:”“}

Example output: (Note that in the value html an unwanted newline is added after COMMA.)
{
code”,
success,
params
part”,
entity”,
html”
}
}

The code may work for simple strings, however it will give unexpected errors for complex data in string values.

By: Jim Higson

Jim Higson — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:06:45 +0000

Hi, I found this in Google and made a Smarty (see smarty.net) plugin out of it in about twenty seconds:

Thanks.

/* Taken from http://recurser.com/articles/2008/03/11/format-json-with-php/ */

/**
* Indents a flat JSON string to make it more human-readable
*
* param string $json The original JSON string to process *return string Indented version of the original JSON string
*/
function smarty_modifier_formatjson($json) {

$result = ‘’;
$pos = 0;
$strLen = strlen($json);
$indentStr = ‘ ‘;
$newLine = “\n”;

for($i = 0; $i <= $strLen; $i ) {

// Grab the next character in the string
$char = substr($json, $i, 1);

// If this character is the end of an element,
// output a new line and indent the next line
if($char ‘}’ || $char ‘]’) {
$result .= $newLine;
$pos —;
for ($j=0; $j<$pos; $j ) {
$result .= $indentStr;
}
}

// Add the character to the result string
$result .= $char;

// If the last character was the beginning of an element,
// output a new line and indent the next line
if ($char ‘,’ || $char ‘{’ || $char ‘[‘) {
$result .= $newLine;
if ($char ‘{’ || $char == ‘[’) {
$pos ;
}
for ($j = 0; $j

By: dave

dave — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:32:09 +0000

No problem, glad you found it useful!

By: Resat

Resat — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:09:58 +0000

Thank you man. This function very simple & usefull. Now i can easely read server json responses.