What is the recommended approach for constructing JSON data in PHP?

When constructing JSON data in PHP, the recommended approach is to create an associative array representing the data you want to encode as JSON, and then use the `json_encode` function to convert the array to a JSON string. This ensures that the data is properly formatted and encoded in a way that is compatible with JSON standards.

// Sample data to be encoded as JSON
$data = array(
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'age' => 30,
    'email' => 'johndoe@example.com'
);

// Convert the associative array to a JSON string
$jsonData = json_encode($data);

// Output the JSON data
echo $jsonData;