StackExchange API's request data is blank in Drupal 7

Question

I'm trying to implement this simple request in Drupal 7 on my local machine:

$request = drupal_http_request('https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users?order=desc&sort=reputation&site=stackoverflow');
$json_response = drupal_json_decode($request->data);

For your information:

• drupal_http_request() performs an HTTP request.
• drupal_json_decode() converts an HTML-safe JSON string into its PHP equivalent.

From my side, the endpoint seems to work fine, as it sends a correct JSON result with all the users.

But I still can't recover the data because it's like $request->data appears like blank despite the "4468 characters". That's wierd.

While I'm supposed to get something like that, with a very beautiful JSON string:

If I try with another API, like Twitter for example, it works fine (sorry I put an old depreciated endpoint but it's not important, I get the data back anyway) :

Does someone have a clue about that strange issue?

Answer 1

As @BrockAdams said, the string is compressed and need to be uncompress depending on the $request->headers.

$request = drupal_http_request('https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users?order=desc&sort=reputation&site=stackoverflow');

if (isset($request->headers['content-encoding'])) {
  if ($request->headers['content-encoding'] == 'gzip') {
    $request->data = gzinflate(substr($request->data, 10));
  }
  elseif ($request->headers['content-encoding'] == 'deflate') {
    $request->data = gzinflate($request->data);
  }
}

$json_response = drupal_json_decode($request->data);