In PHP, you can use json_encode to encode an object as a json string.
$string = json_encode($some_object);
However, PHP has the standard slew of datatypes which are not considered objects (ints, strings, etc.) If you pass in a string to json_encode, this returns a string that contains a javascript statement that could be used to define the string.
In less awkward phrasing, this
echo json_encode("Hello
world, please don't " . '"' . "misuse quote's for emphasis " . "or possessive apostrophes' ");
will output this (a javascript ready string)
"Hello \n\tworld, please don't \"misuse quote'sor possessive apostrophes' "
Is this behavior part of the JSON specification? That is, does JSON define or recommend how an implementation should handle conversion of native, non-object, datatypes? Or even have an opinion on conversion at all? My reading of the RFC left this as ambiguous, but I'm crap at interpreting these things.
I ask because I'm interested in the likelihood of this behavior disappearing from a future version of the function. i.e. If it's codified in a specification somewhere, it's less likely to disappear than if it was a one off someone thought to add on during development.
JSON doesn't care about native types at all. It is up to the developer of the JSON library or functionality as to how the JSON is translated to and from types that the programming language can use/understand.