Can you retrieve json data without it being json_encoded in php?

I am not having any luck but i was wondering if i could grab json dat开发者_StackOverflow社区a if it is not json encoded server side with php. for example if i were to just echo some data like so:

echo '{"subscriptions": [{"subscribe":"'.$subscribe[0].'"},{"subscribe":"'.$subscribe[1].'"},{"subscribe":"'.$subscribe[2].'"},{"subscribe":"'.$subscribe[3].'"},{"subscribe":"'.$subscribe[4].'"}]}';

could i still use a jQuery ajax json call to grab the data?

That certainly looks ok and should work just fine.

json_encode() only makes the process easier as it'd be pretty easy to make a quoting / bracket / brace / square-bracket error when creating the string manually.

I'm guessing you're only asking as json_encode() is not available on your server. As an alternative, you could try the component from Zend Framework. This attempts to use json_encode() but falls back to a built-in approach when not available.

See http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.json.html

Yes, as long as the echo'd data is valid JSON data

Essentially all that is happening is you are creating a JSON format and creating your own encoder. But you will need to post your own JSON headers as well. Start your callback PHP file with:

header('Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate');
header('Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT');
header('Content-type: application/json');

Remember that you will need to take special attention to formatting your JSON otherwise it will break your application.

I believe as long as you send our the proper server header indicating it's JSON content Content-Type: application/json it should be good.

Whats wrong with using PHP's json_encode()? Are you working with an older version of PHP?

You can, but it's not recommended. You should use json_encode. If you have problems for transforming your object first, you can do it like this:

$obj = array(
  "subscriptions" => array(
     array("subscribe" => (string)$subscribe[0]),
     array("subscribe" => (string)$subscribe[1]),
     array("subscribe" => (string)$subscribe[2]),
     array("subscribe" => (string)$subscribe[3]),
  )
);
echo json_encode($obj);

Cheers