title: How to Parse YouTube JSON into PHP?
body: <p>How would I go about parsing JSON from YouTube into PHP variables?
  Here is the JSON that I receive from the YouTube API.</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
   "kind": "youtube#videoListResponse",
   "etag": "\"dc9DtKVuP_z_ZIF9BZmHcN8kvWQ/Mlc20HEmv6-VVTw4GdCc1f-zXBc\"",
   "pageInfo": {
    "totalResults": 1,
    "resultsPerPage": 1
   },
   "items": [
    {
     "kind": "youtube#video",
     "etag": "\"dc9DtKVuP_z_ZIF9BZmHcN8kvWQ/ynrMYdueGEZMM0sWKi_kmMBjv4o\"",
     "id": "e-ORhEE9VVg",
     "contentDetails": {
      "duration": "PT4M33S",
      "dimension": "2d",
      "definition": "hd",
      "caption": "false",
      "licensedContent": true
     },
     "statistics": {
      "viewCount": "1092004149",
      "likeCount": "4304240",
      "dislikeCount": "314746",
      "favoriteCount": "0",
      "commentCount": "412998"
     }
    }
   ]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How would I parse it into variables? For example I would like to extract the view count into <code>$viewCount</code>.</p>