PHP 8.1: implementing JSON Encoding Multidimensional Arrays with Null Values in Laravel
I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. I've been banging my head against this for hours. I'm working with a question when trying to encode a multidimensional array to JSON in PHP 8.1 while using Laravel 9. The array contains several null values, and when I call `json_encode()`, it seems to drop those entries entirely. For example, consider the following array: ```php $data = [ 'user' => 'John Doe', 'contacts' => [ 'email' => 'john@example.com', 'phone' => null, 'address' => [ 'street' => '123 Main St', 'city' => null ] ] ]; ``` When I execute `json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT)`, the output is missing the `phone` and `city` keys: ```json { "user": "John Doe", "contacts": { "email": "john@example.com" } } ``` I've tried using `json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT | JSON_NULL)`, but that doesn't seem to work as expected either. The null values are still not being included in the encoded JSON. I'm aware that by default, `json_encode()` omits null values when encoding arrays. Is there a way to force PHP to include these null entries in the JSON output? I've looked into the PHP documentation but couldn't find a suitable solution. Any insights or workarounds would be greatly appreciated! I'm developing on Debian with Php. I'm working in a Ubuntu 22.04 environment.