A simple JSON response function for PHP. Used in various PhileCMS plugins.

simple-json-reponse.php

<?php

function json_response($code = 200, $message = null)
{
    // clear the old headers
    header_remove();
    // set the actual code
    http_response_code($code);
    // set the header to make sure cache is forced
    header("Cache-Control: no-transform,public,max-age=300,s-maxage=900");
    // treat this as json
    header('Content-Type: application/json');
    $status = array(
        200 => '200 OK',
        400 => '400 Bad Request',
        422 => 'Unprocessable Entity',
        500 => '500 Internal Server Error'
        );
    // ok, validation error, or failure
    header('Status: '.$status[$code]);
    // return the encoded json
    return json_encode(array(
        'status' => $code < 300, // success or not?
        'message' => $message
        ));
}

// if you are doing ajax with application-json headers
if (empty($_POST)) {
    $_POST = json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input"), true) ? : [];
}

// usage
echo json_response(200, 'working'); // {"status":true,"message":"working"}

// array usage
echo json_response(200, array(
  'data' => array(1,2,3)
  ));
// {"status":true,"message":{"data":[1,2,3]}}

// usage with error
echo json_response(500, 'Server Error! Please Try Again!'); // {"status":false,"message":"Server Error! Please Try Again!"}

thank you for this, I had to change line 3 to: function json_response($code = 200, $message = null) for the usage example to work.

thank you for this, I had to change line 3 to: function json_response($code = 200, $message = null) for the usage example to work.

You shouldn't do that, because that way you must use the $code parameter every time, even if you don't want to specify an error code other than 200.

You should rather change the call echo json_response(500, 'Server Error! Please Try Again!'); to echo json_response('Server Error! Please Try Again!', 500);

@james2doyle seems like you're swapping arguments in your usage examples.

@james2doyle

Setting the error code does not work for me. Specifically, if I want to set the error code to 422 I get error 500. To make it work I had to change:

header('Status: '.$status[$code]);

to:

header('Status: '.$code);

Was there any reason why you were setting the status to the string value instead of the error code?

Just swap the argument of method

json_response

.

Before : function json_response($message = null, $code = 200)

After : function json_response($code = 200, $message = null)

dfdf

Thanks for sharing! Btw I think that @saurabhmdh is right. The parameters order were accidentally swapped.

Updated the params. Can't believe they were swapped for so long... 🤕

Only thing I added was ob_clean(); before header_remove();. Is it redundant?

Dears for who gets 500 Server Error use exit after echo the json response
hope it helps

Instead of

return json_encode([
    'status' => $code < 300,
    'message' => $message
]);

I prefer

die(json_encode([
    'status' => $code < 300,
    'message' => $message
]));

so there's no need for echo before calling json_response anymore, and the script is exited.