What best practices should be followed when encoding and decoding JSON data in PHP?

When encoding and decoding JSON data in PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure data integrity and security. When encoding data to JSON, always use the json_encode function with the JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE flag to prevent Unicode characters from being escaped. When decoding JSON data, use the json_decode function with the second parameter set to true to return associative arrays instead of objects.

// Encoding data to JSON
$data = ['name' => 'John', 'age' => 30];
$json = json_encode($data, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

// Decoding JSON data
$jsonData = '{"name": "John", "age": 30}';
$decodedData = json_decode($jsonData, true);