PHP Json_Encode Encoding Numbers as Strings

PHP json_encode encoding numbers as strings

I've done a very quick test :

$a = array(
    'id' => 152,
    'another' => 'test',
    'ananother' => 456,
);
$json = json_encode($a);
echo $json;

This seems to be like what you describe, if I'm not mistaken ?

And I'm getting as output :

{"id":152,"another":"test","ananother":456}

So, in this case, the integers have not been converted to string.

Still, this might be dependant of the version of PHP we are using : there have been a couple of json_encode related bugs corrected, depending on the version of PHP...

This test has been made with PHP 5.2.6 ; I'm getting the same thing with PHP 5.2.9 and 5.3.0 ; I don't have another 5.2.x version to test with, though :-(

Which version of PHP are you using ? Or is your test-case more complex than the example you posted ?

Maybe one bug report on http://bugs.php.net/ could be related ? For instance, Bug #40503 : json_encode integer conversion is inconsistent with PHP ?

Maybe Bug #38680 could interest you too, btw ?

How can I force PHP's json_encode integer values to be encoded as String?

In the link posted by Thomas in comments, one user suggests that you do this:

$data = json_encode(array_map('strval', $data));

This might not be the most efficient in terms of performace though, since every entry on the array will pass through the strval function.

PHP - JSON_ENCODE Number converted to string. How to fix it?

You'll need to convert them from string to float. So we simply map the array with a float conversion

$coor = array_map('floatval', $coor);

PHP JSON encode output number as string

You could also try

echo json_encode( $results, JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK );

Some reference:

PHP JSON constants

Numbers in quotes using json_encode()

If you're building your json data from a one-dimensional array, you can use

echo json_encode(array_map('strval', $data));

This technique will unconditionally convert all values to strings (including objects, nulls, booleans, etc.).

If your data might be multidimensional, then you'll need to call it recursively.

Force json_encode to create strings of numeric values in a flat array

It would be nice if there was the opposite of JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK but it doesn't look like there is.

Why can't you ensure the data is of the correct type in your php, before encoding it?

This might mean you have to cast it manually to strings...

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