this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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PHP causes so many issues because of the fact that it uses the same syntax for both arrays and dictionaries/maps.
[](orarray()in older PHP versions) always JSON encodes to[]because there's no way to tell if it's supposed to represent an empty array or an empty dictionary.Eh. It works just fine. I agree JSON encoding is weird but if you use it the recommended way (just use a StdClass object and throw on the fields you need) it works fine. Someone added half assed support for weird PHP arrays that usually works and is generally good enough.
stdClass is for objects. I'm talking about maps. I guess you could use stdClass for maps too, but that feels weird.
If you read the docs for
json_decode, the default behavior is to operate with stdClass - I too prefer working with associative arrays because of their power but... that kind of just reinforces how useful they are. PHP can give you the full Java class system if you want.. it's just a pain and useless in most circumstances so we all just toss around associative arrays.