title: Decoding JSON feed via PHP from Twitter not working?
body: <p>So I'm pulling down a user's tweet steam in JSON format via PHP. I'd like to decode it into an associative array or at least some more usable fashion rather than a string so that I can maneuver through it.</p>
  
  <p>I've been reading like mad about json_decode, but for me it seems like when I use it, before and after, the contents of the file is still being detected as one long string. Can anyone help me figure out what I am doing wrong?</p>
  
  <pre><code>$url = "http://twitter.com/status/user_timeline/" . $username . ".json?count=" . $count . "&amp;callback=?";    
  
  // $url becomes "http://twitter.com/status/user_timeline/steph_Rose.json?count=5&amp;callback=?";   
          $contents = file_get_contents($url);
          $results = json_decode($contents, true);
  
          echo "&lt;pre&gt;";
          print_r($results);
          echo "&lt;/pre&gt;";
  
          echo gettype($results); // this returns string
  </code></pre>