What is the best way to return data in the JSON format from PHP?
If you are running PHP 5.2 or greater, you can use the built-in json_encode function to return JSON formatted data from PHP. Here is an example of it’s usage:
Example of returning JSON from PHP
$tennisArray = array('Djokovic' => 1, 'Federer' => 2,
'Nadal' => 3, 'Murray' => 4);
echo json_encode($tennisArray);
The code above will output the JSON formatted data like this:
{"Djokovic":1,"Federer":2,"Nadal":3,"Murray":4}
If you are running a version before PHP 5.2, how to return JSON from PHP?
If you are running a version of PHP that came before 5.2 then you can use the PHP extension called PECL available here: JSON and PHP