Convert json encoded String to json object in FosRestBundle - symfony

Question

I have a json encoded string in one of my DB fields, e.g.
[{"name":"car","price":"10"}]
I'm using the FosRestBundle to return the DB-Values in json format and the String above is returned - as String - nothing special until here;)
How can this String be converted, so that a Json Object is returned instead?

Answer 1

Finally I found the solution.
My Entity contained this:
/**
* #var string
*
* #ORM\Column(name="options", type="string", nullable=true)
*/
private $options;
"options" contained the json encoded string. So I tried it with the JMS Serilizer Annotation #Accessor and wrote this specific getter:
/**
* Get optionsAsArray
*
* #return array
*/
public function getOptionsAsArray()
{
return (array)json_decode($this->options, true);
}
Still got an error "Array to string conversion". So the Solution was, to add another Annotation #type and the JMSSerializer returned nicely formatted JSON.
This is what the Entity has to look like:
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Accessor;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Type;
/* ... */
/**
* #var string
*
* #ORM\Column(name="options", type="string", nullable=true)
* #Accessor(getter="getOptionsAsArray")
* #Type("array")
*/
private $options;

Answer 2

You can decode this string to an stdClass or an associative array with json_decode. Is this what you are looking for?
EDIT : This should work
public function myAction()
{
// do stuff
$string = '[{"name":"car","price":"10"}]';
$array = json_decode($string, true);
/* array is like
[
0 => [
'name' => string(3) "car"
'price' => string(2) "10"
]
]
*/
return $array;
}