Question 308097 in PHP Question posted in
Official manual can be found here.

Php – Strange characters in (invalid) json string from post request (encoding issues)

I am trying to get data from a post request using the following line :

$data = file_get_contents('php://input');

The json string might be like: {"test" : "test one xe0 "}

The problem is when I try to do a json_decode($data), I get null. By var_dump()ing $data, I see some characters like xe0 xe7a.

The data sent is in utf-8. I use utf8_decode($data) as well, but with no luck. Could someone explain what I am missing or how to solve this issue?

I need to convert the invalid json from:

$data = '{"test" : "test one xe0 "}';

to:

$data = '{"test" : "test one à "}';
Tags:

2

Answers


  1. 0

    A way to fix your JSON is to replace the invalid xNN sequences with valid u00NN sequences:

    $data = '{"test" : "test one xe0 "}';
$val = json_decode(str_replace('x', 'u00', $data));
echo $val->test;

    Output:

    test one à
    Login or Signup to reply.
  2. 0

    Mutating a json string with string functions will always be something to be done with apprehension because it is generally easy for a false positive replacement to damage the payload. That said, here is a script to attempt to correct your invalid json string.

    Code: (Demo)

    $json = '{"test" : "test one xe0, x270B"}';
    
$json = preg_replace_callback(
           '/\\x([[:xdigit:]]+)/',
           fn($m) => sprintf('u%04s', $m[1]),
           $json
     );
     
echo "n" . var_export(json_validate($json), true);
echo "n$jsonn";
var_export(json_decode($json));

    Output:

    true
{"test" : "test one u00e0, u270B"}
(object) array(
   'test' => 'test one à, ✋',
)

    If this has known flaws, please leave a comment below and I’ll endeavor to overcome the issue when I have time.

    A related answer of mine: Replace all hex sequences with ascii characters

    Login or Signup to reply.
Please signup or login to give your own answer.

Back To Top
Search