Question

How can I parse a JSON file with PHP?

To iterate over a multidimensional array, you can use RecursiveArrayIterator

This is the content of my JSON file:

{
    "John": {
        "status":"Wait"
    },
    "Jennifer": {
        "status":"Active"
    },
    "James": {
        "status":"Active",
        "age":56,
        "count":10,
        "progress":0.0029857,
        "bad":0
    }
}

$jsonIterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
    new RecursiveArrayIterator(json_decode($json, TRUE)),
    RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST);

foreach ($jsonIterator as $key => $val) {
    if(is_array($val)) {
        echo "$key:\n";
    } else {
        echo "$key => $val\n";
    }
}

Output:

John:
status => Wait
Jennifer:
status => Active
James:
status => Active
age => 56
count => 10
progress => 0.0029857
bad => 0

run on codepad

To echo the statuses of each person, try this:

<?php

$string = file_get_contents("/home/michael/test.json");
$json_a = json_decode($string, true);

foreach ($json_a as $person_name => $person_a) {
    echo $person_a['status'];
}

?>