Accessing variables of curl response in PHP

Question

This is the first time I have used curl, and am confused how exactly the $response is formatted, and how I go about accessing the information I want in it. I am trying to access a particular variable from a curl response in PHP to be used in a future conditional. I was provided the URL, and headers to use as an API endpoint, and thus can't change anything on that end. Here is the code for the curl response :

    $ch = curl_init();

    $url = "https://thewebsitesurl.com";
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
    'x-branch: 21', 
    'x-branchhash: fijef89ivjw8934y8f9fifk920a',
    'accept: application/json'
    ));

    $response = curl_exec($ch);`

The contents of a var_dump($response) yields :

string(187) "{"code":"5122","time":"1589812650","voucher":{"code":"5122","comments":"","amount":"11.00","balance":"11.00","created":"1589609333","expiry":"1652616000","redeemed":false,"voided":false}}"

I need to access the "redeemed" and "voided" field. Of course this being a big long string means I can't do that (I believe). Is there a CURLOPT I should be setting so the response isn't received as one big string?

Further if I decode it with $data = var_dump(json_decode($result, true)); the contents are :

array(3) { ["code"]=> string(4) "5122" ["time"]=> string(10) "1589814039" ["voucher"]=> array(8) { ["code"]=> string(4) "5122" ["comments"]=> string(0) "" ["amount"]=> string(5) "11.00" ["balance"]=> string(5) "11.00" ["created"]=> string(10) "1589609333" ["expiry"]=> string(10) "1652616000" ["redeemed"]=> bool(false) ["voided"]=> bool(false) } }

To me this seems much more workable than a long string. However I am struggling to access the ["expiry"], ["redeemed'], and ["voided"] variables. In fact I am struggling just to access the ["code"] string "5122" I have tried :

echo $data[0]['code'];
echo $data[0]["code"];
echo $data['code'];
echo $data["code"];

All 4 of those echos are blank. I have tried to remove "curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);" as well. Afterwards var_dump($result); looks like :

 {"code":"5122","time":"1589815247","voucher":{"code":"5122","comments":"","amount":"11.00","balance":"11.00","created":"1589609333","expiry":"1652616000","redeemed":false,"voided":false}}bool(true)

I am probably misunderstanding something basic here. But any help would be appreciated on how I could access the values in ["expiry"], ["redeemed'], and ["voided"]. Thank you for your assistance.

`$data = var_dump` assigns result of `var_dump` to `$data` and __NOT__ `json_decode`. — u_mulder, May 18 '20 at 15:34
And where are you getting `0`? Just `echo $data['code'];` and `echo $data['voucher']['expiry'];` etc... — AbraCadaver, May 18 '20 at 15:38

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '20 at 15:41

$data = json_decode($result, true);

This will return an array

$data = json_decode($result);

This will return an object.

Do not use var_dump inside this because it is a parse function, just for dumping data. So the final should be:

$data = json_decode($result, true);
$code = $data['code']; // " or ' are not different in this case

Accessing variables of curl response in PHP

1 Answers1