Finally, a word about JSON objects: Unlike JavaScript objects, PHP objects serve mainly as instances of PHP classes, and the available support for manipulating PHP objects is much less than what is available for manipulating PHP associative arrays. In recognition of this, the PHP json_decode and json_encode functions allow JSON objects to be implemented as associative arrays rather than as PHP objects. The only sticky point in doing this is that an empty array is then both a JSON object and a JSON array.