ID: 46600 Comment by: michaeldnelson dot mdn at gmail dot com Reported By: Matt at mpcm dot com Status: No Feedback Bug Type: JSON related Operating System: * PHP Version: 5CVS, 6CVS (2008-11-18) New Comment:
I am using freebsd 7.2 and php 5.2.10 the first test case var_dump(json_decode('{"":"test"}')); silently stops processing of the script The test case var_dump(json_decode('{"test2":5,"":6}')); Fatal error: Cannot access empty property I am not sure the second is expected behavior but considering json is often from feeds it would be nice to fail more gracefully. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2008-12-26 01:00:01] php-bugs at lists dot php dot net No feedback was provided for this bug for over a week, so it is being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the information that was originally requested, please do so and change the status of the bug back to "Open". ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2008-12-23 16:47:05] matt at mpcm dot com A note about this in the json_decode page would be appreciated. Perhaps a strict mode flag, so that it can fail if it cannot be decoded as an object (?). For the moment the only safe way to decode json is into arrays. The _empty_ behavior I thought was a bug (as it was with arrays) is a required behavior for objects (at least without __get && __set in a wrapper class). The bugs that jump out at me now can be seen with the code below... you can create objects with unreachable properties. If that blank property access is fixed, then this becomes not so much of an issue. Or it should be stopped from ever happening... silent errors bite us all. Illegal Member variable name if var_dump does it, fatal if a user does it. Notice: PHPDocument1 line 8 - Illegal member variable name <? $blank = ''; $another = ' another'; $a = array($blank=>1234, 'some other key'=>5678, $another=>9999); $b = (object) $a; $c = json_decode(json_encode($a)); var_dump($b); var_dump($c); #echo $b->$blank; //fatal echo $b->$another; //works #echo $c->$blank; //fatal echo $c->$another; //works ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2008-12-18 03:27:25] scott...@php.net I'm not even sure what the bug is? You can't have an empty property name hence the use of "_empty_". The key collision thing is a very edge case, are you saying you ran into this in a real life usage? The best course of action may be to have this documented on the json_encode() and json_decode() pages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2008-12-04 20:39:13] Matt at mpcm dot com Thanx for the reply magicaltux, `Feature` is an interesting word considering the possible key collision. There are other ways to get things that are not strictly objects to behave that way. Overloading (like example #1 at http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php). It works well enough as long as you also make it iterate correctly. What I am suggesting is that it is better to fail in decoding into an object, than to silently cause a key collision. Or alternatively, produce an overloaded object which can have these keys (by default, or passed optional flag) from json_decode. It's an opinion, but a wrapper gets me where I need to be for now, and I'm pretty sure this is an edge case. $a = '{"":"a","_empty_":"b"}'; echo json_encode(json_decode($a)); echo json_encode(json_decode($a, true)); output: {"_empty_":"b"} {"":"a","_empty_":"b"} for some values: $a != json_encode(json_decode($a)); ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2008-12-04 10:44:29] magical...@php.net I believe this is not a bug, but a feature. An object *can't* have an empty property (while an array can). If you want to use json_decode() with json containing empty key, either access those empty key using special keyword "_empty_", or put the optionnal $assoc parameter of json_decode() to true to get result as an array. If you want objects to support empty keys, I believe this is not going to happen soon, as this is enforced by a specific error message. Fatal error: Cannot access empty property in php shell code on line 1 Please note that a property name starting with NULL character won't work either. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at http://bugs.php.net/46600 -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=46600&edit=1