PHP Yii webservice, JSON null issue in iPhone

Question

I write web services to be consumed in iPhone with iPhone developers. My co-developers from iPhone always complain that I send data as null instead of "null".

Let me explain this scenario in detail.

$cdata_provider = new CSqlDataProvider("Users");

echo CJSON::encode($cdata_provider->data);

OUTPUT

{
 "users": [
 {
   "firstname":"Mike",
   "lastname":null
 },
{
   "firstname":"Steve",
   "lastname":null
 }
]
}

The data is OK for me. But the iphone app crashes when it receives data as null. The iphone developer says that it is great if I send "null" (with double quotes) instead of null (without double quotes.

The required output would be:

{
 "users": [
 {
   "firstname":"Mike",
   "lastname":"null"
 },
{
   "firstname":"Steve",
   "lastname":"null"
 }
]
}

Can I accomplish this? Do I need to configure something? I did a lot google but didn't solve this issue.

Answer 1

Use str_replace() to accomplish this

   echo str_replace("null",'"null"',CJSON::encode($cdata_provider->data));

Answer 2

Try to replace the null with another word from the Query

   $cdata_provider = new CSqlDataProvider("select firstname,replace(lastname,'null','MyWord') as lastname from YourUserTable");
   echo CJSON::encode($cdata_provider->data);

Output will come as

      { 
        "users": 
          [
            {
              "firstname":"Mike",
              "lastname":"MyWord"
            },
            {
              "firstname":"Steve",
              "lastname":"MyWord"
            }
           ]
       }