What are the best practices for handling JSON objects in PHP to extract specific fields?

When working with JSON objects in PHP, one of the best practices for extracting specific fields is to use the `json_decode()` function to convert the JSON string into an associative array. Once the JSON object is decoded, you can easily access specific fields by using array notation.

// Sample JSON object
$jsonString = '{"name": "John Doe", "age": 30, "city": "New York"}';

// Decode the JSON object into an associative array
$data = json_decode($jsonString, true);

// Extract specific fields
$name = $data['name'];
$age = $data['age'];
$city = $data['city'];

// Output extracted fields
echo "Name: $name\n";
echo "Age: $age\n";
echo "City: $city\n";