Clean way to output data as json

[thmsnhl]

Hi everyone,

I've recently hired at a new company and here I am evaluating the abilities of ProcessWire for our projects.
I was able to meet almost every requirement so far, but there is one point I couldn't find an adequate solution for: outputting data to json.

I am aware of modules like https://modules.processwire.com/modules/pages2-json/ (which does not seem to work for me) but I thought with a function like wireEncodeJSON this should be much cleaner. What I would like to achieve is outputting pages with according field values into an array to use this within javascript.
My first attempt on this was:

$jsontestOne = $pages->find(1001)->children();
echo wireEncodeJSON($jsontestOne);

which outputs 

[{}]

and afterwards I tried that one:

$jsontest = $pages->find("template=basic-page")->getArray();
echo wireEncodeJSON($jsontest);

which outputs 

[{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},...]

Maybe you can point out where my mistake is.
 

Thanks in advance!

[Zeka]

Hi @thmsnhl

Have you seen this thread? 

There is an example that you may find useful

$events = $pages->find("template=sectionItem, parent=1025|1066|1073|1069|1013|1247|1101, sort=startTime, start=10, limit=3");
$events_array = array();

foreach ($events as $event) {
    
    $start = "".date(strtotime($event->startTime))."";
    $title = $event->title;
    
    $events_array[] = array(
        'title' => $title, 
        'date' => $start
    );
}

$events_json = json_encode($events_array, true);
echo $events_json;

 

[Macrura]

the problem is that you have an array, but the items in the array are \ProcessWire\Page objects, so those can't directly map to a json encode.

you probably need to cycle through the pages you want and create the array manually. Alternately you could have a look at the GraphQL module, which i think some devs are using to get json data to the frontend.

[thmsnhl]

Thank you @Zeka for this thread I just realized that I had this already open in a tab but waaaaaay too far on the right hand side of the window, I will try to fit the example in to my project.
But first I will have a look into GraphQL because this might also help me with future requirements. 

[abdus]

For simple json outputs, you can use WireArray::explode and json_encode() or wireEncodeJSON() methods

https://processwire.com/api/ref/wire-array/explode/

$myPages = $pages->find('template=basic-page');
// extract required fields into plain array
$data = $myPages->explode(['title', 'created']);
echo wireEncodeJSON($data);

[thmsnhl]

@abdus perfect!

That's exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

[LostKobrakai]

For more advanced uses (api or even json-api by specification) I'd recommend something like fractal.