What are best practices for decoding JSON data in PHP?

When decoding JSON data in PHP, it is best practice to use the json_decode() function, which converts a JSON string into a PHP variable. It is important to check for errors during decoding by verifying the return value and using json_last_error() to get detailed error information. Additionally, specifying the second parameter of json_decode() as true will return an associative array instead of an object.

$json_data = '{"name": "John", "age": 30}';
$decoded_data = json_decode($json_data, true);

if ($decoded_data === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
    // Handle decoding error
} else {
    // Process decoded data
}