Consume JSON API Data in PHP

Learn to fetch and parse external JSON API responses in your PHP scripts using cURL and built-in PHP functions.

🌐 Why JSON APIs Matter

JSON is the standard data format for most modern APIs. PHP makes it easy to consume and parse this data for use in your applications. Whether you're integrating a weather service, payment gateway, or user data provider, knowing how to handle JSON is essential.

🔗 Step 1: Fetch JSON Data from an API

<?php
$url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users";
$response = file_get_contents($url);

if ($response !== false) {
  $users = json_decode($response, true);
  print_r($users);
} else {
  echo "Error fetching API data.";
}
?>

This example uses file_get_contents() to retrieve data and json_decode() to convert it to a PHP array.

🌀 Step 2: Using cURL to Fetch JSON

<?php
$ch = curl_init("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$data = json_decode($response, true);

foreach ($data as $post) {
  echo "<h3>" . htmlspecialchars($post['title']) . "</h3>";
  echo "<p>" . htmlspecialchars($post['body']) . "</p>";
}
?>

Using cURL gives you more flexibility and control , especially when dealing with headers or authentication.

❗ Handling Errors Gracefully

<?php
if ($response === false) {
  echo "Failed to fetch API data.";
} elseif (($data = json_decode($response, true)) === null) {
  echo "Invalid JSON received.";
} else {
  // Proceed with using $data
}
?>

Always check for both request and decoding errors to avoid runtime issues.

📋 Common Use Cases

• Fetching blog posts from a headless CMS
• Getting weather data or exchange rates
• Retrieving user profiles from a remote server
• Consuming public datasets like GitHub or OpenWeather