1

Here is my PHP code, it's getting a listing of collections from mongodb

$list = $db->dbname->listCollections();
$result = array();
$i=0;
foreach ($list as $thiscollection) {
    $result[$i++] = $thiscollection->getName();
}
echo json_encode( $result );

I do console.log in the callback and this is what I see.

["fruits", "dogs", "cars", "countries"]

The problem is that this is a string, not an array. I need to iterate through these values. How an I make this into a real object or get php to give me json rather than php array so I can use parseJSON on it.

Thanks.

js:

$.post('/ajax-database.php', function (data) {
    console.log($.parseJSON(data));
    $.each(data, function (key, value) {
        console.log(value);
    });
});
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4
  • It is an array if the console print that out. Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 18:54
  • @timdream when isArray says it's not. When I try to run $.each on it i get every character, including the brackets and the quotes. Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 19:01
  • That's wired. Could you post your Javascript function? Maybe header('Content-Type: text/javascript'); before echo to make sure jQuery interpret the data as json? Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 19:03
  • @timdream adding "json" as datatype to the end of the post did the trick. I guess I don't understand how that works, I thought parseJSON did the same thing? Blerg. Commented Nov 27, 2010 at 19:18

2 Answers 2

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3

I see you are using jquery, if you want data to come back to you as a json object you need to do 1 of 2 things.

  1. add header("Content-Type: application/json") to your php file, this will tell jquery to convert it to a json object instead of as text

  2. Add a forth parameter to your $.post,

$.post('/ajax-database.php', function (data) {
    console.log($.parseJSON(data));
    $.each(data, function (key, value) {
        console.log(value);
    });
}, "json");

that will tell jquery to call your error handler if its NOT json, like if your php code fails and outputs html instead. You really should use $.ajax, i have no idea why anyone uses $.post, you can't do ANY meaningful error handling.

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2 Comments

If a request with jQuery.post() returns an error code, it will fail silently unless the script has also called the global .ajaxError() method. - api.jquery.com/jQuery.post
Yes I know, I just consider it bad practice to globally handle errors in that respect, as each different script could and probably will error differently.
0

JSON is strings. If you want to be able to iterate over it then you need to decode it.

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8 Comments

yeah but the problem is that it's not json. it it's got square brackets.
Yes, it is. The top value is not required to be an object.
@Mark: remember [] just mean Array, and all array's in javascript ARE objects, they have prototypes.
Specifically, the top value in JSON can be any of the things in the value construct here: json.org
The question was asking how to decode the string I got. I can run parseJSON on the string, and the values inside the fake array became json objects, but I still couldn't iterate over the entire array. The fake array became a real object after I set the datatype. I'm pretty confused by this answer.
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