Why does var_dump return null?

[phpn0w]

why does var_dump return null of a decoded json object while print_f works fine?

[phdr]

Cannot help you with any code you tried without having all the code needed to reproduce the problem. You are either using the statement incorrectly, in a different program scope, or at a point where the data doesn’t exist.

[phpn0w]

I have two json-objects which looks exactly the same but with different data.
I just realized that var_dump works in One of them but not on the other one. The problem should therefore be something with the data itself, but what?

[benanamen]

Post the code. Your speculations are of no use to us.

[phpn0w]

Here is the code

<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);

       $url = "";
       $xml = simplexml_load_file($url);

   
       $json = json_encode($xml);
       $array = json_decode($json,true);

       $obj = (object) [
           'data' => [
                       
           ],
       ];

       $obj = json_encode($obj);
       $obj = json_decode($obj, true);

           $obj['data'][0] = [ (object) [
               'place' => '', 
               'events' => []]];

       $obj = json_encode($obj);
       $obj = json_decode($obj, true);
    

       for($i=0; $i<$size; $i++){

           .........
           gather the data
           .........

           $obj['data'][0][0]['events'][$i] = (object) [
               'starts'=> $starts,
               'ends' => $ends,
               'info' => $info
           ];
       }

       $obj = json_encode($obj);
       var_dump(json_decode($obj, true));

[benanamen]

What is the real problem you are trying to solve with this code? All I see is you jumping in and out of encoding/decoding. What is the high level overview of what you have going on?