Magento 2 How to return JSON object in rest response

Question

I want to return the JSON response suggested by the mobile app developer. My custom rest API currently returning responses in the below format.

[{
"status": true,
"data": [
 {
 "entity_id": "3",
 "name": "Test category",
 "icon_name": "test",
 "category_url": "http://127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/test-category/id/3/",
 "button_name": "Sell Now"
 },
 {
 "entity_id": "4",
 "name": "magento Test",
 "icon_name": null,
 "category_url": "http://127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/magento-test/id/4/",
 "button_name": "Sell Now"
 }
]}]

And below is the expected result:

 {"status": true,
 "data": [
 {
 "entity_id": "3",
 "name": "Test category",
 "icon_name": "test",
 "category_url": "http://127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/test-category/id/3/",
 "button_name": "Sell Now"
 },
 {
 "entity_id": "4",
 "name": "magento Test",
 "icon_name": null,
 "category_url": "http://127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/magento-test/id/4/",
 "button_name": "Sell Now"
 }
 ]
 }

The code that I have implemented: Interface:

 /**
 * Get category collection
 *
 * @api
 * @return string
 */
 public function getCategoryCollection();

Model:

public function getCategoryCollection()
 {
 try
 {
 $collection = $this->_categoryCollectionFactory->create();
 $collection->addAttributeToSelect('*'); 
 $collection->addIsActiveFilter(); 
 $i=0;
 if(count($collection)){
 foreach ($collection as $category){
 $data[$i]=["entity_id" => $category->getId(),
 "name"=> $category->getName(),
 "icon_name" => $category->getData('category_icon_name'),
 "category_url" => $category->getUrl(),
 "button_name" => "Sell Now"
 ];
 $i++;
 }
 $output = ["status"=>true, "data"=>$data];
 }
 else{
 $output=["status"=>false,"message"=>"No Category found"];
 } 
 return [$output]; 
 }
 catch (\Exception $exception) { 
 $output=["status"=> false, 'message' => $exception->getMessage()];
 return [$output];
 }
 }

I got one solution to add the below code but using that might be not appropriate:

print_r(json_encode($output)); 
die();

Any help will be grateful.

• Philipp Sander: return $output; instead of return [$output]; should do the trick.
• Philipp Sander: also please not that this is not how responses normally look like in m2
• savita nagdev: when using only return $output; getting response like: [ true, [ { "entity_id": "3", "name": "Test category", "icon_name": "test", "category_url": "127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/test-category/id/…", "button_name": "Sell Now" }, { "entity_id": "4", "name": "magento Test", "icon_name": null, "category_url": "127.0.0.1/magento/pub/catalog/category/view/s/magento-test/id/4", "button_name": "Sell Now" } ] ]
• Philipp Sander: then you have to create a response model that represents your format. as i said: you're showing the response in a format that is unusual in magento.

Answer 1

Try sending response like this

$this->response is object of \Magento\Framework\Webapi\Rest\Response class

 $this->response->setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json', true)
 ->setBody(json_encode($output))
 ->sendResponse();

• savita nagdev: response is which class's object?
• Philipp Sander: this should not be used in webapi controllers
• savita nagdev: Getting response like this: can't parse JSON. Raw result: {"status":true,"data":[{"entity_id":"3","name":"Test category","icon_name":"test","category_url":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/magento\/pub\/catalog\/category\/view\/s\/test-category\/id\/3\/","button_name":"Sell Now"},{"entity_id":"4","name":"magento Test","icon_name":null,"category_url":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/magento\/pub\/catalog\/category\/view\/s\/magento-test\/id\/4\/","button_name":"Sell Now"}]}[]
• Maham Mubashir: Magento\Framework\Webapi\Rest\Response Inject this response object in your class using dependency injection
• HoangHieu: We should use $jsonResponse = $this->resultFactory->create(\Magento\Framework\Controller\ResultFactory::TYPE_JSON); from the controller