How can JSON strings be accessed and decoded properly in PHP to handle special characters?

When accessing and decoding JSON strings in PHP that contain special characters, it is important to ensure that the data is properly encoded and decoded to prevent any issues with character encoding. One way to handle special characters in JSON strings is to use the json_decode function with the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE option, which will ensure that Unicode characters are not escaped when decoding the JSON string.

$jsonString = '{"name": "John D\u00f6e"}';
$data = json_decode($jsonString, true, 512, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

echo $data['name']; // Output: John Döe