Basic Usage

Usage of Zend\Json involves using the two public static methods available: Zend\Json\Json::encode() and Zend\Json\Json::decode().

// Retrieve a value:
$phpNative = Zend\Json\Json::decode($encodedValue);

// Encode it to return to the client:
$json = Zend\Json\Json::encode($phpNative);

Pretty-printing JSON

Sometimes, it may be hard to explore JSON data generated by Zend\Json\Json::encode(), since it has no spacing or indentation. In order to make it easier, Zend\Json\Json allows you to pretty-print JSON data in the human-readable format with Zend\Json\Json::prettyPrint().

// Encode it to return to the client:
$json = Zend\Json\Json::encode($phpNative);
if ($debug) {
    echo Zend\Json\Json::prettyPrint($json, array("indent" => " "));
}

Second optional argument of Zend\Json\Json::prettyPrint() is an option array. Option indent allows to set indentation string - by default it’s a single tab character.