The difference between PHP and json_decode of json_encode

Often confuse the two PHP functions:

json_encode () is a variable coding json

json_encode () is the value to be encoded, and the encoding function only valid data utf8

 

of json_decode ($ json) json to decode data is converted into variable PHP

$ JSON data to be decoded, the data must be encoded utf8

When json_decode ($ json, true) is returned array value is TRUE, FALSE by default as empty or JSON object