json_encode with object in array

Question

I'm trying to create a function in Wordpress that sends data with JSON through Curl to a Slack webhook. I'm more used to the way you structure arrays and objects in JavaScript, so doing this in PHP before it's being encoded to JSON is a bit confusing to me.

This is how the PHP for this encoding looks:

$data = json_encode(array(
 "username"=> "Email Notifier",
 "mrkdwn"=> true,
 "icon_emoji"=> ":email:",
 "text" => "*Name:* {$posted_data["your-name"]}\n*Email:* {$posted_data["your-email"]}\n*Subject:* {$posted_data["your-subject"]}\n*Message:*\n >{$posted_data["your-message"]}",
 ));
 // Finally send the data to Zapier or your other webhook endpoint
 $ch = curl_init("https://hooks.slack.com/services/Txxxxxx/Bxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"); // replace with your Zapier webook
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
 curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT ,5); //Optional timeout value
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5); //Optional timeout value
 $result = curl_exec($ch);
 curl_close($ch);
 return $result;

This sends the following JSON to the Slack webhook successfully:

{
 "username": "Email Notifier",
 "mrkdwn": true,
 "icon_emoji": ":email:",
 "text": "whatever" //generated by using PHP variables
}

I now want to be able to output the text property and additional properties within an array called attachment, like this:

{
 "username": "Email Notifier",
 "mrkdwn": true,
 "icon_emoji": ":email:",
 "text": "You have received a new message!",
 "attachment": [
 { 
 "text": "whatever", //generated by using PHP variables
 "fallback": "Required plain-text summary of the attachment.",
 "color": "#36a64f",
 }
 ]
}

But I'm not really sure how to solve this with the PHP syntax. Any ideas?

• IncredibleHat: Be mindful of your double-quotes in double-quotes ... as that causes concatenation issues. You'll need to use single quotes on like $posted_data['your-name'] instead of doubles.
• deceze: array('attachment' => array(array('text' => 'whatever', ...)))
• axiac: Read about PHP arrays. They are not difficult. Basically, PHP arrays work similar to Javascript objects handled using the array notation. json_encode() handles the proper encoding as JSON.
• splash58: If you have a sample of desired json, say print_r(json_decode($sample)); and see what array structure you need

Answer 1

Try this, like @deceze says.

$data = json_encode(array(
 "username"=> "Email Notifier",
 "mrkdwn"=> true,
 "icon_emoji"=> ":email:",
 "text" => "*Name:* {$posted_data["your-name"]}\n*Email:* {$posted_data["your-email"]}\n*Subject:* {$posted_data["your-subject"]}\n*Message:*\n >{$posted_data["your-message"]}",
 "attachment" => array(
 array( 
 "text" => "whatever",
 "fallback" => "Required plain-text summary of the attachment.",
 "color" => "#36a64f",
 ),
 ),
));
// Finally send the data to Zapier or your other webhook endpoint
 $ch = curl_init("https://hooks.slack.com/services/Txxxxxx/Bxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"); // replace with your Zapier webook
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
 curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT ,5); //Optional timeout value
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5); //Optional timeout value
 $result = curl_exec($ch);
 curl_close($ch);
return $result;

Also take a look of this section on the PHP official documentation json_encode()