In what situations should JSON decoding be used in conjunction with file_get_contents in PHP?

JSON decoding should be used in conjunction with file_get_contents in PHP when you need to retrieve JSON data from an external source or file and parse it into a PHP array or object for further manipulation. This is commonly used when working with APIs that return JSON data. By using file_get_contents to fetch the JSON data and then decoding it with json_decode, you can easily work with the data in your PHP application.

$url = 'https://api.example.com/data';
$json_data = file_get_contents($url);
$data = json_decode($json_data, true);

// Now $data contains the JSON data as a PHP array
// You can access the data like $data['key'] or iterate through it with a foreach loop