Having trouble extracting values from the Yelp API via PHP

Question

Let me be up front: I'm a PHP hack. There's probably some stupid mistakes in here. Please point them out if you see them.

What I'm trying to do: I'm creating a page for a restaurant that would like their Yelp reviews displayed. I'm using the Yelp Phone API to grab the reviews for the specific business. Please view the sample response on the Yelp API documentation located here: http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/phone_api#sampleResponse

What I've done:

• Successfully connected to the API and returned a response
• echoed values from the response array in a foreach loop.

If you view the documentation, you can see there are a few levels of the response. I can easily print, echo, whatever values from the second tier, but what I'm really after is all nested in the "reviews" section of the response. I'm having trouble figuring out how to echo the values within the reviews section (eg user_name, review_excerpt etc).

My Code:

$yelpstring = file_get_contents("http://api.yelp.com/phone_search?phone=[redactedphonenumber]&ywsid=[redactedapikey]", true);
$obj = json_decode($yelpstring);

foreach($obj->businesses as $key => $business)
{
$reviews = $business->reviews;

//print_r($reviews);
echo $reviews['user_name'];
}

If I echo $reviews, I just get the word "Array". If I print_r($reviews), I get an expected list of keys and values. If I try to echo a specific value from the array(echo $reviews['user_name'], I get nothing. Any light shed on what I'm doing wrong would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure I'm missing something simple. Thank you for your time!

Edit: print_r($reviews) output:

Array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [rating_img_url_small] => http://media4.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012164278297776/img/ico/stars/stars_small_2.png [user_photo_url_small] => http://media2.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012162819681786/img/gfx/blank_user_extra_small.gif [rating_img_url] => http://media4.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012163489049252/img/ico/stars/stars_2.png [rating] => 2 [user_url] => http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=vZbcPrYPSMFIDIfTub5H1g [url] => http://www.yelp.com/biz/jelly-cafe-denver#hrid:u9ckRV6tKApe6Bu93M93CA [mobile_uri] => http://m.yelp.com/biz/5G2X2q9p7QFdm-LbyutltQ?srid=u9ckRV6tKApe6Bu93M93CA [text_excerpt] => I wanted to like this place. It's got the contemporary name and it's full of hipsters. The place looked clean and the style was fun and cute. I felt like... [user_photo_url] => http://media3.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012161186834854/img/gfx/blank_user_small.gif [date] => 2011-09-07 [user_name] => boycott p. [id] => u9ckRV6tKApe6Bu93M93CA ) [1] => stdClass Object ( [rating_img_url_small] => http://media4.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012164278297776/img/ico/stars/stars_small_2.png [user_photo_url_small] => http://media1.px.yelpcdn.com/upthumb/MWu84G5QtmBmT9GoqjT_kg/ss [rating_img_url] => http://media4.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012163489049252/img/ico/stars/stars_2.png [rating] => 2 [user_url] => http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=izF2cGrmqt-u_Z2tDZ8dbg [url] => http://www.yelp.com/biz/jelly-cafe-denver#hrid:OYLeeCMgnpZkk1c9LWu97g [mobile_uri] => http://m.yelp.com/biz/5G2X2q9p7QFdm-LbyutltQ?srid=OYLeeCMgnpZkk1c9LWu97g [text_excerpt] => Food is decent and overpriced, but service is a joke. Your food will take a minimum of 20 minutes, for the basic breakfast. Then when your food does come... [user_photo_url] => http://media1.px.yelpcdn.com/upthumb/MWu84G5QtmBmT9GoqjT_kg/ms [date] => 2011-09-06 [user_name] => April H. [id] => OYLeeCMgnpZkk1c9LWu97g ) [2] => stdClass Object ( [rating_img_url_small] => http://media2.px.yelpcdn.com/static/20101216418129184/img/ico/stars/stars_small_4.png [user_photo_url_small] => http://media1.px.yelpcdn.com/upthumb/3euzdGdLZRFxImY68MSg7w/ss [rating_img_url] => http://media2.px.yelpcdn.com/static/201012164084228337/img/ico/stars/stars_4.png [rating] => 4 [user_url] => http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=bHR9UU4vtx2QKZD44O0E5g [url] => http://www.yelp.com/biz/jelly-cafe-denver#hrid:njvNAzfSII3PxXyUymLZ1w [mobile_uri] => http://m.yelp.com/biz/5G2X2q9p7QFdm-LbyutltQ?srid=njvNAzfSII3PxXyUymLZ1w [text_excerpt] => Stopped here for breakfast on a friday morning. We were seated immediately and had a really friendly waitress. I ordered a side order of the Chai french... [user_photo_url] => http://media1.px.yelpcdn.com/upthumb/3euzdGdLZRFxImY68MSg7w/ms [date] => 2011-09-05 [user_name] => Diane F. [id] => njvNAzfSII3PxXyUymLZ1w ) ) 

Answer 1

Based on the output of print_r you can't reference $reviews['user_name'];

Note that $reviews is an Array of objects. So to access user_name you need to use

echo $reviews[0]->user_name;

And if you have more than one item in the array, you will need a loop like

for ($i = 0; $i<count($reviews); $i++) {
    echo $reviews[$i]->user_name;
}

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

$reviews is an array of review objects. You'll need to loop over it to get to the data you're after.