Inside this article we will see the concept i.e How to read json file in codeigniter 4. Article contains classified information. It will give the complete idea of json file reading in codeigniter 4.
This tutorial will be super easy to understand and it’s steps are easier to implement in your code as well. If you learn reading json file here, you can use the same concept in data seeding to database via json file. This is step by step tutorial in codeigniter 4 about json file reading.
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Let’s get started.
CodeIgniter 4 Installation
To create a CodeIgniter 4 setup run this given command into your shell or terminal. Please make sure composer should be installed.
$ composer create-project codeigniter4/appstarter codeigniter-4
Assuming you have successfully installed application into your local system.
Environment (.env) Setup
When we install CodeIgniter 4, we will have env file at root. To use the environment variables means using variables at global scope we need to do env to .env
Either we can do via renaming file as simple as that. Also we can do by terminal command.
Open project in terminal
$ cp env .env
Above command will create a copy of env file to .env file. Now we are ready to use environment variables.
Enable Development Mode
CodeIgniter starts up in production mode by default. You need to make it in development mode to see any error if you are working with application.
Open .env file from root.
# CI_ENVIRONMENT = production
// Do it to
CI_ENVIRONMENT = development
Now application is in development mode.
JSON Data Preparation
Let’s consider a .json file in application. We have a students.json inside /writable folder.
{
"students":[
{
"name": "Sanjay Kumar",
"email": "sanjay@gmail.com"
},
{
"name": "Ashish Kumar",
"email": "ashish@gmail.com"
},
{
"name": "Dhananjay Negi",
"email": "dj@gmail.com"
},
{
"name": "Vijay Rohila",
"email": "vijay@gmail.com"
}
]
}
You can place this .json file either in /writable folder or /public folder.
Create Controller
Open project into terminal and run this spark command.
$ php spark make:controller Site --suffix
It will create a file SiteController.php inside /app/Controllers folder.
Assuming .json file is placed within /writable folder.
Open SiteController.php and write this complete code into it.
<?php namespace App\Controllers; use App\Controllers\BaseController; class SiteController extends BaseController { public function index() { $students = json_decode(file_get_contents(WRITEPATH."students.json"), true); echo "<pre>"; print_r($students); } }
Concept
$students = json_decode(file_get_contents(WRITEPATH."students.json"), true);
Here, we are parsing students.json file. WRITEPATH is a CodeIgniter 4 constant which returns the path upto /writable folder.
If you have taken /public folder then you should use FCPATH in place of it. json_decode returns the data in object format. But putting true as second value it returns the data into array format.
Once you get data from .json into array format, you can insert into your database as well.
Create Route
Open Routes.php from /app/Config folder. Add this route into it.
//... $routes->get('/data', 'SiteController::index'); //...
Application Testing
Open project terminal and start development server via command:
$ php spark serve
URL: http://localhost:8080/data

We hope this article helped you to learn How To Read JSON File in CodeIgniter 4 Tutorial in a very detailed way.
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