json encode return as objects instead array

Question

I have already read this question and doesn't answer my issue.

I have an Array like this:

Array
(
 [0] => Array
 (
 [COM] => 10659.68
 )
 [1] => Array
 (
 [MCD] => 1219.09
 )
 [2] => Array
 (
 [MCR] => 77047.65
 )
)

And when I make a json_encode() it return this;

[{"COM":10659.68},{"MCD":1219.09},{"MCR":77047.65}]

What I need is get the data in this way:

[["COM":10659.68],["MCD":1219.09],["MCR":77047.65]]

Any idea how can I achieve this

• Amal: The first is valid JSON, second is not.
• Ruben Serrate: You can't expect json_encode() to return an invalid JSON
• lelloman: if you are sure about the format of the content of each string I think you could make a regex replace on the json_encode output, did you try?
• Emilio Gort: @lelloman I'm going to try..thnks for the idea
• lelloman: yw, @RubenSerratePardo gave the answer maybe you don't need to write it ;)

Answer 1

Even though that's not a valid JSON, you can replace the { with [

echo str_replace(array('{','}'),array('[',']'),json_encode($your_array)); 

Depending on the content you might need a more complex replacement with regular expressions.

Answer 2

More complex solution:

function toJson($arr){
 $return = array();
 foreach($arr as $k => $v){
 if(is_array($v)) $return[] = toJson($v);
 else $return[] = sprintf('"%s":%s', $k, $v);
 }
 return sprintf('[%s]', implode(',', $return));
}

Test:

$input = array(
 array('COM' => '10659.68'),
 array('MCD' => '1219.09'),
 array('MCR' => '77047.65'), 
);
var_dump(toJson($input));

string(51) "[["COM":10659.68],["MCD":1219.09],["MCR":77047.65]]"