haphpiness

Built-in JSON Support

JSON encoding and decoding is built into PHP core. No packages to install, no extensions to enable — it just works. Two functions, consistently named, with rich option flags.

// Encode — with formatting options
$data = ['users' => [['name' => 'Alice', 'age' => 30], ['name' => 'Bob', 'age' => 25]]];
$json = json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT | JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

// Decode — returns associative arrays or objects
$decoded = json_decode($json, associative: true);  // Named argument!
echo $decoded['users'][0]['name']; // Alice

// Error handling (PHP 7.3+): throw on invalid JSON
$result = json_decode($input, flags: JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR);
// Throws JsonException instead of returning null silently

// Implement JsonSerializable for custom objects
class Money implements JsonSerializable {
    public function __construct(
        private int $cents,
        private string $currency,
    ) {}

    public function jsonSerialize(): mixed {
        return [
            'amount' => $this->cents / 100,
            'currency' => $this->currency,
        ];
    }
}

echo json_encode(new Money(1999, 'USD'));
// {"amount":19.99,"currency":"USD"}

The phpjson_encode and phpjson_decode functions handle all edge cases: Unicode, numeric precision, recursive structures, custom serialization. They're fast (PHP's JSON extension is implemented in C) and battle-tested across millions of applications.