title: Why json_decode doesn't work for me?
body: <p>I'm a little confused here. if I pass a variable to json_decode, it doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$stringJSON = $_GET['jsonstring'];  
  echo $stringJSON;
  $stringObject = json_decode($stringJSON);
  var_export($stringObject);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The first echo correctly shows me the JSON string I passed, e.g. </p>
  
  <pre><code>{\"Items\":[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"],\"Name\":\"Christmas\"}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The second echo shows NULL.
  So I grab the string from the first echo and write the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$stringObject = json_decode("{\"Items\":[{\"Name\":\"name\",\"Description\":\"\"],\"Name\":\"Christmas\"}");
  var_export ($stringObject);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And what do you say, it shows me the correctly decoded array. The string is absolutely the same, I even kept the escape characters. Or maybe they are the problem?</p>