Difficulty Accessing Values from JSON Object Using PHP- Sunlight Labs congressapi

Question

I'm trying to pull values from a JSON object pulled from the Sunlight Labs Congress API using PHP. I'm able to get request response data into a JSON object, but haven't had any success getting specific values out of the object. I can successfully dump the object using print_r.

I've been experimenting with PHP for about 12 hours now, so this is a totally n00b question...

Here's the PHP:

$zip = $_REQUEST['zip'];
$sf = new SunlightLegislator;

$data = $sf->legislatorZipCode( $zip );
$leg = json_decode($data);

echo '<pre>';
print_r($data).'</pre><p>';
echo 'First Name ';

echo $leg[1]->legislator->firstname;

echo $leg[1]->firstname;
?>

The PHP yields this output:

stdClass Object
(
    [0] => stdClass Object
        (
            [legislator] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [website] => http://bass.house.gov/
                    [fax] => 202-225-2946
                    [govtrack_id] => 400019
                    [firstname] => Charles
                    [chamber] => house
                    [middlename] => 
                    [lastname] => Bass
                    [congress_office] => 2350 Rayburn House Office Building
                    [eventful_id] => 
                    [phone] => 202-225-5206
                    [webform] => 
                    [youtube_url] => 
                    [nickname] => Charlie
                    [gender] => M
                    [district] => 2
                    [title] => Rep
                    [congresspedia_url] => 
                    [in_office] => 1
                    [senate_class] => 
                    [name_suffix] => 
                    [twitter_id] => RepCharlesBass
                    [birthdate] => 1952-01-08
                    [bioguide_id] => B000220
                    [fec_id] => H0NH02017
                    [state] => NH
                    [crp_id] => N00000423
                    [official_rss] => 
                    [facebook_id] => 
                    [party] => R
                    [email] => 
                    [votesmart_id] => 22216
                )

        )

    [1] => stdClass Object
        (
            [legislator] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [website] => http://shaheen.senate.gov
                    [fax] => 
                    [govtrack_id] => 412323

                    ...SNIPPAGE...

                    [facebook_id] => SenatorShaheen
                    [party] => D
                    [email] => 
                    [votesmart_id] => 1663
                )

        )

    [2] => stdClass Object
        (
            [legislator] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [website] => http://ayotte.senate.gov 
                    [fax] => 
                    [govtrack_id] => 412493
                    [firstname] => Kelly
                    [chamber] => senate
                    [middlename] => A 

                    ...SNIPPAGE...

                    [email] => 
                    [votesmart_id] => 42352
                )

        )

)
First Name

At the moment, I'm just trying to output the first legislator's first name to the page. I'm certain that the data's there, and doing an error check on json_decode yields no errors. I think my trouble is in the syntax I'm using to access the decoded object.

The questions: How would I output the a legislator's first name? Is it possible that the website field is breaking object access?

Thanks, Sean

After getting a little deeper with some of the debugging functionality of PHP, it appears that my problem is that I'm handing json_decode and object rather than a string. I've modified the php according to information found in another post here, adding ini_set('display_errors',1); error_reporting(E_ALL); yields a new error/warning: json_decode() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given ... So, I was probably barking up the wrong tree with my attempts to access the array data. Instead I have to convert the returned object to an array first. — bagelwoof
– bagelwoof, Commented Jul 26, 2011 at 17:21

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:20:04Z

0

This appears to be solved on stdClass Object problems by @soulmerge. For your object, the following would work:

$array = (array) $result;
$array[0]->legislator->website;

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:20

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Feb 26, 2012 at 15:03

technoTarek

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