PHP Array to JSON and JSON to Array

In this article, I’ll explain how to convert a PHP array into a JSON string and similarly how to convert a JSON string back into PHP array. I’ll use built in Php functions for this purpose.

Convert PHP Array to JSON

To convert array into a JSON string, we use the Php json_encode() function as per example below:

$arr = array(
    "name" => "John",
    "age" => 30,
    "city" => "New York"
);

$json = json_encode($arr );
echo $json;

Output:

{"name":"John","age":30,"city":"New York"}

The above example will convert the associate array into JSON and will print the JSON string.

Convert JSON to PHP Array

Now, to convert a JSON string back into a PHP array, we use the Php json_decode() function.

$json_str = '{"name":"John","age":30,"city":"New York"}';

$array = json_decode($json_str , true);
print_r($array);

Output:

Array
(
    [name] => John
    [age] => 30
    [city] => New York
)

That’s it! You’ve today successfully learned how to convert PHP arrays to JSON and vice versa.