Force PHP json_encode() to encode indexes as strings

Question

I have a an array setup as follows: ``` $myArray = array(); $myArray[] = "New array item 1"; $myArray[] = "New array item 2"; $myArray[] = "New array item 3"; ``` When I run json_encode() on it it outputs the following: ``` ["New array item 1","New array item 2","New array item 3"] ``` What I want is for the function to encode the indexes as strings: ``` {"0":"New array item 1","1":"New array item 2","2":"New array item 3"} ``` So that later I can remove say the first item without affecting the index of the second. Is there an easy way to do this?

Accepted Answer

Use `JSON_FORCE_OBJECT`:

```
json_encode( $data, JSON_FORCE_OBJECT );
```

Requires PHP 5.3+

Force PHP json_encode() to encode indexes as strings

Solution

Problem