Properly parse a Mongo cursor to PHP

Question

When converting a MongoCursor to PHP I use this script. Which was presented here StackOverflow SO

using the upper method, the structure is same but _id is whereas using the lower script which yields the below included result.

Unfortunately, this results in the actual object being embedded into an array with the _id from Mongo. Like this :

`4eefa79d76d6fd8b50000007 =             {
            "_id" =                 {
                "$id" = 4eefa79d76d6fd8b50000007;
            };
            longText = "Error Description";
            nCode = dee29fd7e15ce4ab2d3f7dfa7c5d8fc44b27501ad00908771128c920ef276154;
            nStatus = Process;
            nText = "E12345";
            nVType = Type1;
            pId =                 {
                "$id" = 4eefa79676d6fd8b50000003;
            };
            pushDate = "2011-12-20+06%3A07%3A41";
            updateFlag = 1;
        };`

Since I am passing this object to another service for processing the _id is not known.

How can I convince the PHP Driver to parse the object properly?

The problem is that id is getting nested, but we need them to post their code. Please post your code user1094824. — Tyler Brock, Dec 21 '11 at 16:09
'_id' containing '$id' is actually to be expected, as his document contains a MongoId object (mongo generated key, returned by php as MongoId class/object), which is represented with '$id'. — Jon L., Apr 09 '12 at 18:08

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '11 at 00:15

Basically what I did was this.

return json_encode(iterator_to_array($cursor));

But this created the aforementioned object which is not what I needed.

I solved it in this way.

 $i=0;

   foreach($cursor as $item){
       $return[$i] = array(
           '_id'=>$item['_id'],
           'nCode'=>$item['nCode'],
           'pId'=>$item['pId'],
           'nText'=>$item['nText'],
           'longText'=>$item['longText'],
           'nStatus'=>$item['nStatus'],
           'nVType'=>$item['nVType'],
           'pushDate'=>$item['pushDate'],
           'updateFlag'=>$item['updateFlag'],
           'counter' => $i
                    );
       $i++;
   }

return json_encode($return);

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 01 '12 at 02:47

If you result is big in order to save RAM you could try this more efficient method:

function outIterator($iterator, $resultName='results')
{
    // Efficient MongoCursor Iterator to JSON
    // instead of encoding the whole result array to json
    // process each item individually
    // in order to save memory by not copying the data multiple times

    //Start Json Output
    header('Content-Type: application/json');
    echo '{' . $resultName . ': ['

    //Output each item as json if there are results in the iterator     
    if ($iterator->hasNext()){
        foreach ($iterator as $item)
        {   
            echo json_encode ($fixeditem);
            if ($iterator->hasNext()) echo ', ';
        }
    }

    //end Json output
    echo  ']}';
}

$results = $db->collection->find();
outIterator($results);

Properly parse a Mongo cursor to PHP

2 Answers2