- json_decode: documentation ( source)
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url . '/likes');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 0);
$json = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$count = json_decode($json, true);
$count = $count['items']['statistics'];