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Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 04:03:36 -0600
Message-ID: <CAHWSxWTAY3rf9PRM4vJtBRWXR5MuXC4yhAVH769EjsSXPu5ORw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Niklas Keller <me@kelunik.com>
Cc: Giovanni Giacobbi <giovanni@giacobbi.net>, Craig Duncan <php@duncanc.co.uk>, 
	Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] json_encode() / json_decode() warnings
From: ryan.jentzsch@gmail.com (Ryan Jentzsch)

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I can't count how many times I've been bitten by this. From the infamous
fractal blog:

"Parts of PHP are practically designed to produce buggy code.
json_decode returns null for invalid input, even though null is also a
perfectly valid object for JSON to decode to=E2=80=94this function is compl=
etely
unreliable unless you also call json_last_error every time you use it."

Most functions in PHP return false as an indicator for an invalid call.
json_decode() returns null -- changing this to return false is also a
breaking change that may not survive a vote.

Because of the unreliability I don't use this function and always rely on
3rd party JSON libraries instead.

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 12:59 AM, Niklas Keller <me@kelunik.com> wrote:

> 2017-07-28 8:56 GMT+02:00 Giovanni Giacobbi <giovanni@giacobbi.net>:
>
> > On 27 July 2017 at 18:00, Craig Duncan <php@duncanc.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> On 27 July 2017 at 16:57, Niklas Keller <me@kelunik.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > It should rather just throw exceptions. Warnings do not really allow
> >> error
> >> > handling, they just allow error reporting.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> Agreed, but I can't see Exceptions passing the vote. Warnings can be
> >> silenced by those that don't care and converted to Exceptions by those
> >> that
> >> do
> >>
> >
> > Error management is a painful topic in PHP, expecially when considering
> to
> > the way fopen() behaves, where you *need* to use the "@" suppression if
> > you want it to behave the way you expect it to behave.
> >
> > About Exceptions you can easily build a framework around core functions=
,
> > for example this is in my core library for all projects:
> >
> > ```php
> > function safe_json_decode($json =3D null) {
> >   if ($json =3D=3D "")
> >     return null;
> >
> >   $retval =3D json_decode($json, true, 512, JSON_BIGINT_AS_STRING);
> >   if (json_last_error() !=3D JSON_ERROR_NONE)
> >     throw new JsonDecodeException(json_last_error_msg(),
> > json_last_error());
> >
> >   return $retval;
> > }
> > ```
> >
> > So yes, the behaviour of json_decode() might not be optimal, but it's
> fine
> > the way it is.
> >
>
> Yes, I know. There's https://github.com/DaveRandom/ExceptionalJSON.
>
> While the current API works, I'm not sure whether I'd say its fine.
>
> Regards, Niklas
>

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