 <p>There's no need to strip the square brackets. Simply call <code>json_decode()</code> on the data and retrieve your information.</p> <p><strong>Note:</strong> the data in the form you have it decodes to an array of objects, with just one object, so you need to provide an array subscript:</p> <pre><code>$json = json_decode("My JSON Data...here"); echo $json[0]-&gt;address; </code></pre> <p>See <a href="http://phpfiddle.org/main/code/r4g-552" rel="nofollow">this fiddle</a></p> <p><strong>2nd Note:</strong> the data as you have posted it has embedded newlines which caused a problem with <code>json_decode()</code>. If you have those in your original data you'll need to strip them before decoding. I edited them out in the fiddle.</p>