note 105923 modified in function.json-encode by danbrown

If, for some reason you need to force a single object to be an array, you can use array_values() -- this can be necessary if you have an array with only one entry, as json_encode will assign it as an object otherwise : <?php $object[0] = array("foo" => "bar", 12 => true); $encoded_object = json_encode($object); ?> output: {"1": {"foo": "bar", "12": "true"}} <?php $encoded = json_encode(array_values($object)); ?> output: [{"foo": "bar", "12": "true"}] --was-- If, for some reason you need to force a single object to be an array, you can use array_values() -- this can be necessary if you have an array with only one entry, as json_encode will assign it as an object otherwise : $object[0] = array("foo" => "bar", 12 => true); $encoded_object = json_encode($object); output: {"1": {"foo": "bar", "12": "true"}} $encoded = json_encode(array_values($object)); output: [{"foo": "bar", "12": "true"}] http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php