[basex-talk] JSON output in PHP client

11 Jul 2014

      I've been playing a bit with BaseX the last couple of days - and very 
excited about the product while doing so - but now I am having problems 
outputting JSON from a PHP script.

I have this XQuery:

declare option output:method "json";
declare option output:json "format=jsonml";
<json type="object">
{
for $user in collection("saveresult")//user[_id="1f2cda8f-a18a-44ba-8d17-73626d472306"]
return
<testResults>
   <testId>{$user/test/_id}</testId>
   <grade>{$user/user_info/user_grade}</grade>
   </testResults>
}
</json>

In the BaseX GUI this yields:

["json", {"type":"object"},
   ["testResults",
     ["testId",
       ["_id",
         "Bio-1"]],
     ["grade",
       ["user_grade",
         "7"]]],
   ["testResults",
     ["testId",
       ["_id",
         "Bio-2"]],
     ["grade",
       ["user_grade",
         "1"]]]]

Which is what I expected after reading about the JSONML format. (Not too 
happy with that format, but that's another story).

Running exactly the same XQuery form within a PHP script however yields 
this:

<json  type="object">
   <testResults>
     <testId>
       <_id>Bio-1</_id>
     </testId>
     <grade>
       <user_grade>7</user_grade>
     </grade>
   </testResults>
   <testResults>
     <testId>
       <_id>Bio-2</_id>
     </testId>
     <grade>
       <user_grade>1</user_grade>
     </grade>
   </testResults>
</json>

(script is attached; note that the $ signs have been escaped there so 
that PHP will not try to evaluate them)

In other words, the result is being output as XML with an enclosing 
<json> root tag, not as JSON.

What is happening here? And how can I have BaseX return JSON from PHP?

Paul Swennenhuis