Display an empty json instead of []

Question

I have a json that is look like this

{
    "data": [
       data here
    ]
}

and here is how i fill it up

$json = array();
    foreach ($result as $key => $value) {
            $json['data'][] = $value;   
        }

and here is how i display it

echo json_encode($json,JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

what if the data for is empty? how can I display an empty json because my php only display [] when it is empty

like maybe something like this

{
    "data": [

    ]
}

Answer 1

I would suggest explicitly defining your structure before adding records to your 'data' index. Currently, the 'data' property is only created during result iteration, which is why you're seeing a string of [] wen there are no records.

$json = array( 'data' => array() );

This will also help to avoid any warnings/notices generated by PHP.