 <p>its just missing its outer container.</p> <p>try this:</p> <pre><code>return new JsonResponse( array( array( "id" =&gt; 288, "title" =&gt; "Titanic", "year" =&gt; "1997" )) ); </code></pre> <p>this should output as:</p> <pre><code>[{"id":288,"title":"Titanic","year":"1997"}] </code></pre>