Detect bad json data in PHP json_decode()?

Here are a couple of things about json_decode :

• it returns the data, or null when there is an error
• it can also return null when there is no error : when the JSON string contains null
• it raises a warning where there is a warning — warning that you want to make disappear.

To solve the warning problem, a solution would be to use the @ operator (I don’t often recommend using it, as it makes debuging a lot more harder… But here, there is not much of a choice) :

$_POST = array(
    'bad data'
);
$data = @json_decode($_POST);

You’d then have to test if $data is null — and, to avoid the case in which json_decode returns null for null in the JSON string, you could check json_last_error, which (quoting) :

Returns the last error (if any)
occurred by last JSON parsing.

Which means you’d have to use some code like the following :

if ($data === null
    && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
    echo "incorrect data";
}