Getting structured data from JInputJSON

Question

If I send a JSON string to my controller that has a nested object in it, rather than just a simple object with a bunch of scalar properties on it, I don't seem to have a way of accessing the nested object effectively. If I 'get' the name of the nested object, I am returned an array of the property values of the nested object, which isn't much use to me. Any hints?

Example:

Sending this:

{"feedback":{"howhear":"Leaflet","comment":"Nice Joomla! site"}}

And accessing it like this:

$app = JFactory::getApplication();
$jinput = $app->input->json;
$feedback = $jinput->get('feedback');

Just gives me:

[ "Leaflet", "Nice Joomla! site" ]

Can I get the object instead using JInputJSON, or do I need to fallback to handling the raw POST data ie via php://input

EDIT:

To clarify, the key benefit I want from using JInputJSON is the filtering capabilities it provides. I know json_decode is available for the task, but it provides no filtering eg. to combat SQL injection attacks.

Answer 1

How do you do requests?

I did something like the following in my projects:

$jinput = JFactory::getApplication()->input->json;
$feedback = $jinput->get('feedback', array(), 'array'); // will return your array with keys

To get nested items with filters: You can also nest arrays to get more complicated hierarchies of values:

$fooValues = $jinput->getArray(array(
    'feedback' => array(
        'comment' => 'string',
        'someint' => 'int'
    )
));

Source: https://docs.joomla.org/Retrieving_request_data_using_JInput

Additional info for others using JinputJson:

JInputJson Joomla Doc

JInput Class Source

JInputJson Class Soure

JinputJson just extends Jinput and changes $this->data to encoded JSON (as array). You can then retrieve the data with the get function.

I would recommend to build your JSON object like {"comment":"abc","howhear":"abc"}, so you could use the filter on the entries directly:

$feedback['comment'] = $jinput->get('comment', '', 'string');

Answer 2

As one of the comments stated, why not use json_decode?

$objJSon = json_decode($json); //if you want you can add true as a second 

You can then retrieve the values from $objJSon. Again, if you want an associative array, just change json_decode($json) to json_decode($json, true)