What are some best practices for decoding JSON data in PHP using json_decode() function?

When decoding JSON data in PHP using the json_decode() function, it is important to handle errors that may occur during the decoding process. One best practice is to check the return value of json_decode() to ensure that the decoding was successful. Additionally, it is recommended to specify the second parameter of json_decode() as true to return the data as an associative array.

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

if ($decoded_data === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
    throw new Exception('Error decoding JSON data: ' . json_last_error_msg());
}

print_r($decoded_data);