What are the potential pitfalls of using json_decode in PHP?

One potential pitfall of using json_decode in PHP is that it may return NULL if the JSON data is malformed or invalid. To handle this, you can check the return value of json_decode and handle the error accordingly by using the JSON_ERROR_NONE constant to verify if the decoding was successful. 

$json_data = '{"key": "value"}';
$decoded_data = json_decode($json_data);

if ($decoded_data === null && json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
    // Handle error, such as malformed JSON data
} else {
    // Proceed with using $decoded_data
}

Keywords

json_decode PHP data types error handling security

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