PHP 8.2 - how to to Handle Nested JSON Decoding with Invalid UTF-8 Characters
I'm working on a PHP 8.2 application that processes JSON data retrieved from an external API. The JSON includes nested objects and arrays, but I’m working with issues when it contains invalid UTF-8 characters. Specifically, I'm trying to decode the following JSON string: ```json {"data": [{"name": "John Doe", "age": 30}, {"name": "Jane Doe", "age": 25}], "meta": {"info": "Sample data \uFFFD invalid character"}} ``` When I use `json_decode` to parse this JSON string, I get an unexpected result. Here's the PHP code I’m using: ```php $json = '{"data": [{"name": "John Doe", "age": 30}, {"name": "Jane Doe", "age": 25}], "meta": {"info": "Sample data \uFFFD invalid character"}}'; $result = json_decode($json, true); if (json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) { echo 'JSON behavior: ' . json_last_error_msg(); } ``` The output I receive is `JSON behavior: Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded`. I’ve tried using the `mb_convert_encoding` function to sanitize the input, but it doesn't seem to resolve the scenario: ```php $json = mb_convert_encoding($json, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-8'); ``` After this, the `json_decode` still fails with the same behavior. Is there a reliable way to handle this situation? I need to ensure that the JSON can be decoded correctly without losing any important data or causing further issues. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!