Need to remove squre bracket json_encode(array())

Below is my code and it return me json array but i need to remove square bracket from response

$sql = "select user_loginId,user_password from wnl_user where user_loginId='student01' and user_password='123456' and user_status='active'";
            //echo $sql;die;
            $result = mysql_query($sql);

            $num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result); //function to get number of rows from result

              $posts = array();

              if($num_rows != 0)
              {
                  if(mysql_num_rows($result)) {
                    while($post = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
                      $posts[] = array('status'=>'1','post'=>$post);
                    }
                  }

                  echo json_encode(array('posts'=>$posts));
              }
              else
              {
                    echo json_encode(array('status'=>"0",'data'=>"No Data Found"));
              }

And response is

{"posts":[{"status":"1","post":{"user_loginId":"student01","user_password":"123456"}}]}

i need to remove {“posts”:[ this from the starting square bracket and ]} also from the end.

Please help me out from this problem

Answer

Use, You can remove array('posts'

echo json_encode($posts);

instead of

echo json_encode(array('posts'=>$posts));