Convert a json to multi-dimensional PHP array

I have the following json sent to my API endpoint

{“key”:”levels”,”value”:”[{role_id:1, access_level_id:3}, {role_id:2, access_level_id:1}, {role_id:3, access_level_id:2}]”,”description”:””}

at the backend, I receive it as a Laravel request as follows:

public function functionName(Request $request){
    $req=$request->all();
    Log::debug($req['value']);
    return;
}

And it returns the following expected result

array ( ‘key’ => ‘levels’, ‘value’ => ‘[{role_id:1, access_level_id:3}, {role_id:2, access_level_id:1}, {role_id:3, access_level_id:2}]’, ‘description’ => NULL, )

But I need to convert the ‘value’ to array also. so that I can have a multidimensional PHP array. So I expect to get something like

array ( ‘key’ => ‘levels’, ‘value’ => array( array(‘role_id’=>1, ‘access_level_id’=>3), array(‘role_id’=>2, ‘access_level_id’=>1), array(‘role_id’=>3, ‘access_level_id’=>2) ) ‘description’ => NULL, )

but when in my Laravel method I do the following:

public function share_doc(Request $request){
        $req=$request->all();
        Log::debug(json_decode($req['value'],true));
        return;
    }

trying to convert the json received as ‘value’ to PHP array, it returns nothing -i.e. no value, no array, no string. Just nothing.

So, my struggle here is how I can convert the entire json string received as ‘value’ from the request to a PHP array so that I can iterate through the items with PHP

Thank you for helping

Answer

Your problem is that the value element is not valid JSON as the keys are not quoted. For the sample data you provide, you can fix that with preg_replace and then json_decode the changed value:

$x['value'] = json_decode(preg_replace('/(w+)(?=:)/', '"$1"', $x['value']), true);
print_r($x);

Output:

Array
(
    [key] => levels
    [value] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [role_id] => 1
                    [access_level_id] => 3
                )
            [1] => Array
                (
                    [role_id] => 2
                    [access_level_id] => 1
                )
            [2] => Array
                (
                    [role_id] => 3
                    [access_level_id] => 2
                )
        )
    [description] => 
)

Demo on 3v4l.org