Problem parsing valid JSON in PHP

[Vampyress86]

Hey there,

 

I am using prototype to send JSON information to a PHP file which will then use the data to update a database, the AJAX presently looks as follows:

 

function saveprofile()
{
var email = document.getElementById("email").value;

var profileDetails = 
{
"email":email,
"titleitalic":titleitalic,
"profileDetails":titlefontcolor,
"titlefontcolor":titleunderline,
"titleoffsettop":titleoffsettop,
"titleoffsetleft":titleoffsetleft,
"aboutbackgroundcolour":aboutbackgroundcolour,
"aboutunderline":aboutunderline,
"aboutfontfamily":aboutfontfamily,
"aboutbold":aboutbold,
"aboutitalic":aboutitalic,
"aboutfontcolor":aboutfontcolor,
"aboutoffsettop":aboutoffsettop,
"aboutoffsetleft":aboutoffsetleft,
"statusoffsetleft":statusoffsetleft,
"statusinfooffsetright":statusinfooffsetright,
"pictureoffsetleft":pictureoffsetleft,
"profilebold":profilebold,
"profileunderline":profileunderline,
"profileitalic":profileitalic,
"profilefontcolor":profilefontcolor,
"profilefontfamily":profilefontfamily,
"profilebackgroundcolour":profilebackgroundcolour
}

var jsonstring = JSON.stringify(profileDetails);
alert(jsonstring);

   var request = new Ajax.Request
        ('scripts/updateprofile.php',
            { method: 'POST',
              parameters: jsonstring,
              onComplete: responseReturned }
        );
}	

 

Which outputs the following JSON which has been tested on http://www.jsonlint.com/ as valid:

 

{
    "email": "l-wilson-1986@hotmail.co.uk",
    "titleitalic": "normal",
    "profileDetails": "#d0deea",
    "titlefontcolor": "none",
    "titleoffsettop": 100,
    "titleoffsetleft": 100,
    "aboutbackgroundcolour": "transparent",
    "aboutunderline": "none",
    "aboutfontfamily": "Arial",
    "aboutbold": "normal",
    "aboutitalic": "normal",
    "aboutfontcolor": "#d0deea",
    "aboutoffsettop": 325,
    "aboutoffsetleft": 100,
    "statusoffsetleft": 450,
    "statusinfooffsetright": 250,
    "pictureoffsetleft": 100,
    "profilebold": "normal",
    "profileunderline": "none",
    "profileitalic": "normal",
    "profilefontcolor": "#fff",
    "profilefontfamily": "Arial",
    "profilebackgroundcolour": "#2c3c49"
}

 

The PHP file which receives the JSON looks as follows:

 

<?php

$myjson = $_POST['jsonstring'];
$jsonchars = json_decode(($myjson), true);

$json_errors = array(
    JSON_ERROR_NONE => 'No error has occurred',
    JSON_ERROR_DEPTH => 'The maximum stack depth has been exceeded',
    JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR => 'Control character error, possibly incorrectly encoded',
    JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX => 'Syntax error',
);
echo 'Last error : ', $json_errors[json_last_error()], PHP_EOL, PHP_EOL;

// do something with the data

?>

 

The problem is the PHP constantly returns the following error: Last error : Syntax error and any attempts to access the JSON data returns NULL values. I have looked at several online examples and cannot see where I might be going wrong, and although users have had problems with syntax errors it normally relates to incorrect JSON.

 

Any advice on this topic would be greatly appeciated

 

Leanne

[kenrbnsn]

I tested with:

<?php
$json_str = '{
    "email": "l-wilson-1986@hotmail.co.uk",
    "titleitalic": "normal",
    "profileDetails": "#d0deea",
    "titlefontcolor": "none",
    "titleoffsettop": 100,
    "titleoffsetleft": 100,
    "aboutbackgroundcolour": "transparent",
    "aboutunderline": "none",
    "aboutfontfamily": "Arial",
    "aboutbold": "normal",
    "aboutitalic": "normal",
    "aboutfontcolor": "#d0deea",
    "aboutoffsettop": 325,
    "aboutoffsetleft": 100,
    "statusoffsetleft": 450,
    "statusinfooffsetright": 250,
    "pictureoffsetleft": 100,
    "profilebold": "normal",
    "profileunderline": "none",
    "profileitalic": "normal",
    "profilefontcolor": "#fff",
    "profilefontfamily": "Arial",
    "profilebackgroundcolour": "#2c3c49"
}';
$x = json_decode(($json_str),true);
echo '<pre>' . print_r($x,true) . '</pre>';
$json_errors = array(
    JSON_ERROR_NONE => 'No error has occurred',
    JSON_ERROR_DEPTH => 'The maximum stack depth has been exceeded',
    JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR => 'Control character error, possibly incorrectly encoded',
    JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX => 'Syntax error',
);
echo 'Last error : ', $json_errors[json_last_error()], PHP_EOL, PHP_EOL;
?>

 

And it works fine.  There has to be something wrong with the incoming string. If you have magic quotes turned on there are probably backslashes escaping the quotes in the string. Use stripslashes on it before passing it to json_decode

 

<?php
$myjson = stripslashes($_POST['jsonstring']);
?>

 

Ken

[Vampyress86]

Hey Ken,

 

Thankyou for your reply and my late response. It actually turns out the problem came from the #'s in the colour code, all this time and all I had to do was use var_dump($myjson); to see where my json string halted haha.

 

Thankyou for your time and response

 

Leanne

[blacknight]

preg_replace('/.+?({.+}).+/','$1',$json); usualy cleans it up to and stops errors...

[kenrbnsn]

Can you explain what that does for those of us who are reg-expression challenged?

 

Ken