I added a 3rd regex to the json_decode_nice function by "colin.mollenhour.com" to handle a trailing comma in json definition. Original function here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php#95782

json_decode_nice.php

<?php
function json_decode_nice($json, $assoc = FALSE){ 
    $json = str_replace(array("\n","\r"),"",$json); 
    $json = preg_replace('/([{,]+)(\s*)([^"]+?)\s*:/','$1"$3":',$json);
    $json = preg_replace('/(,)\s*}$/','}',$json);
    return json_decode($json,$assoc); 
}

// Example:

$dat_json = <<<EOF
{
  "foo"	: "bam",
	"bar"	: "baz",
}
EOF;

$dat_array = json_decode_nice( $dat_json );

var_dump ( $dat_json, $dat_array ); 

/* RESULTS:

string(35) "{
	"foo"	: "bam",
	"bar"	: "baz",
}"
array(2) {
  ["foo"]=>
  string(3) "bam"
  ["bar"]=>
  string(3) "baz"
}
*/
?>

Doesnt work for indexed based arrays e.g.
{
"a": [1,2,3,]
}

This regular expression from PHP website does: $json=preg_replace('/,\s*([]}])/m', '$1', $json);

but it doesnt handle this situation:

{
"a" : "a,b,c," // this is valid and not a trailing comma but it gets detected as a trailing comma
}

If someone could modify the above regular expression so that it does not remove trailing commas from string values that would be perfect