We run two sites on Joomla 3.7.2, PHP 7.0.20 and MySQLi 5.5.5-10.1.24-MariaDB. We have updated both consistently since they were built and only now we discover this issue. I recently restored both sites from a backup using Akeeba. Whenever trying to save a change or a new module/article or attempt navigating to Global Configuration we get the "Error decoding JSON data: Syntax error".
I have spent a day researching this issue and have now used the https://github.com/robwent/joomla-json-db-check script. It did not find any empty spaces to start with but reported a series of one type of error and one instance of another. Since I am not trained in PHP, even when looking at the code in https://jsonlint.com I still cannot understand what is wrong with it.
I am posting the code here asking for help to find out what is wrong with it.
The first error shown is in _acymailing_mail:
Row 5 is not valid JSON. Error: (Syntax error)
Content: a:3:{s:6:"action";s:7:"confirm";s:13:"actionbtntext";s:28:"{trans:CONFIRM_SUBSCRIPTION}";s:9:"actionurl";s:19:"{confirm}{/confirm}";}
Next comes 54 errors that all look to be very similar:
Row 77 is not valid JSON. Error: (Syntax error)
Content: a:3:{s:6:"action";s:4:"none";s:13:"actionbtntext";s:0:"";s:9:"actionurl";s:0:"";}
The second one is shown in _extensions:
Row 23 is not valid JSON. Error: (Syntax error)
Content: {"filters":{"1":{"filter_type":"NH","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"9":{"filter_type":"BL","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"6":{"filter_type":"BL","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"7":{"filter_type":"NONE","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"2":{"filter_type":"NH","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"3":{"filter_type":"BL","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"4":{"filter_type":"BL","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"5":{"filter_type":"BL","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""},"8":{"filter_type":"NONE","filter_tags":"","filter_attributes":""}},}},}}}
I can edit the code myself if only someone could tell me what is wrong with it and what needs to be changed.
Best Regards
Johan Niklasson