JSON Encode Incorrect Syntax

Question

I've followed the instructions from question 7076525 with no luck. I've added my [] but for some reason it only puts them around every third row? I'm having trouble figuring out what syntax to put in my code to make this work.

    // output data of each row
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {

    $rows[] = $row;
    //Add the header...
    header('Content-Type: application/json');
        echo json_encode($rows);
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

Here is what my json data looks like currently:

[
    {
        "ticket_id": "66",
        "number": "000005",
        "user_id": "109",
        "user_email_id": "0",
        "status_id": "3",
        "dept_id": "1",
        "sla_id": "1",
        "topic_id": "36",
        "staff_id": "1",
        "team_id": "0",
        "email_id": "0",
        "flags": "0",
        "ip_address": "10.18.1.195",
        "source": "Phone",
        "isoverdue": "0",
        "isanswered": "1",
        "duedate": null,
        "reopened": null,
        "closed": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastmessage": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastresponse": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "created": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "updated": "2015-04-20 07:16:46"
    }
][
    {
        "ticket_id": "66",
        "number": "000005",
        "user_id": "109",
        "user_email_id": "0",
        "status_id": "3",
        "dept_id": "1",
        "sla_id": "1",
        "topic_id": "36",
        "staff_id": "1",
        "team_id": "0",
        "email_id": "0",
        "flags": "0",
        "ip_address": "10.18.1.195",
        "source": "Phone",
        "isoverdue": "0",
        "isanswered": "1",
        "duedate": null,
        "reopened": null,
        "closed": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastmessage": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastresponse": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "created": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "updated": "2015-04-20 07:16:46"
    },
    {
        "ticket_id": "67",
        "number": "000006",
        "user_id": "129",
        "user_email_id": "0",
        "status_id": "3",
        "dept_id": "1",
        "sla_id": "1",
        "topic_id": "36",
        "staff_id": "1",
        "team_id": "0",
        "email_id": "0",
        "flags": "0",
        "ip_address": "10.18.1.121",
        "source": "Other",
        "isoverdue": "0",
        "isanswered": "1",
        "duedate": null,
        "reopened": "2015-04-20 07:25:42",
        "closed": "2015-04-20 07:25:54",
        "lastmessage": "2015-04-20 07:18:33",
        "lastresponse": "2015-04-20 07:25:54",
        "created": "2015-04-20 07:18:33",
        "updated": "2015-04-20 07:25:54"
    }
][
    {
        "ticket_id": "66",
        "number": "000005",
        "user_id": "109",
        "user_email_id": "0",
        "status_id": "3",
        "dept_id": "1",
        "sla_id": "1",
        "topic_id": "36",
        "staff_id": "1",
        "team_id": "0",
        "email_id": "0",
        "flags": "0",
        "ip_address": "10.18.1.195",
        "source": "Phone",
        "isoverdue": "0",
        "isanswered": "1",
        "duedate": null,
        "reopened": null,
        "closed": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastmessage": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "lastresponse": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "created": "2015-04-20 07:16:46",
        "updated": "2015-04-20 07:16:46"
    },
    {
        "ticket_id": "67",
        "number": "000006",
        "user_id": "129",
        "user_email_id": "0",
        "status_id": "3",
        "dept_id": "1",
        "sla_id": "1",
        "topic_id": "36",
        "staff_id": "1",
        "team_id": "0",
        "email_id": "0",
        "flags": "0",
        "ip_address": "10.18.1.121",
        "source": "Other",
        "isoverdue": "0",
        "isanswered": "1",
        "duedate": null,
        "reopened": "2015-04-20 07:25:42",
        "closed": "2015-04-20 07:25:54",
        "lastmessage": "2015-04-20 07:18:33",
        "lastresponse": "2015-04-20 07:25:54",
        "created": "2015-04-20 07:18:33",
        "updated": "2015-04-20 07:25:54"
    },

Answer 1

You're doing your encoding INSIDE the loop. It should be done after the loop:

while(...) { 
   build array
}
echo json_encode($array);

As it stands now, you're outputting multiple separate json strings, e.g.

{"foo":"bar"}{"baz":"qux"}

which is syntactically illegal JSON. If you do the encoding AFTER the loop, you'd get

[{"foo":"bar"},{"baz":"qux"}]

which IS legal.

And on top of that, you'd be outputting your header() on each loop iterating, causing a ton of "headers already sent" warning messages, which further adds to the corruption.

A json response must contain one single syntactically valid json string, and nothing else.

Answer 2

You have to put the JSON encoding outside your while loop:

while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    $rows[] = $row;
}

//Add the header...
header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo json_encode($rows);

Otherwise, you are just concatenating multiple JSON arrays, which result in an invalid JSON overall.