Laravel 5 Message Bags: Converting the Message Bag to JSON With toJson

The toJson method will return a JSON encoded version of the data stored within the message bag instance. It internally does this by returning a call to PHP's json_encode function, passing in any $options that were supplied. Like the json_encode function, the $options parameter is a bitmask of the predefined JSON constants.

#Signature

The signature of the toJson method is:

1public function toJson(
2    $options = 0
3);

#Example Use

The following examples demonstrate the basic usage of the toJson method:

 1use Illuminate\Support\MessageBag;
 2
 3// Create a new MessageBag instance.
 4$messageBag = new MessageBag;
 5
 6// Add items to the MessageBag
 7$messageBag->add('first',  'The very first message');
 8$messageBag->add('first',  'The second message');
 9$messageBag->add('second', 'I should not be in the output');
10
11// Convert the MessageBag to JSON.
12$jsonValue = $messageBag->toJson();

After the above code has executed, the $jsonValue variable would contain a value similar to the following output (some lines have been wrapped and indented to improve readability):

1string '{
2    "first": [
3        "The very first message",
4        "The second message"
5    ],
6    "second": [
7        "I should not be in the output"
8    ]
9}'

Alternatively, a well-formatted value can be returned by passing in the JSON_PRETTY_PRINT constant:

1// Convert the MessageBag to formatted JSON.
2$jsonValue = $messageBag->toJson(JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

After the above code has executed, the $jsonValue variable would now contain formatted JSON, similar to the following output:

1{
2    "first": [
3        "The very first message",
4        "The second message"
5    ],
6    "second": [
7        "I should not be in the output"
8    ]
9}

#toJson and Deeply Nested Data Structures

The toJson method internally makes a call to PHP's json_encode function. Unlike json_encode, toJson does not provide a way to specify the depth (essentially how many arrays are nested inside of each other) to which data will be encoded, which is by default set to 512. To convert a message bag instance into its JSON equivalent with a depth greater than 512, the following method will be sufficient:

 1use Illuminate\Support\MessageBag;
 2
 3// Create a new MessageBag instance.
 4$messageBag = new MessageBag([]);
 5
 6// Replace 512 with the desired depth.
 7$jsonValue = json_encode(
 8    $messageBag->jsonSerialize(),
 9    0,
10    512
11);

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