PHP json_encode array to javascript associative array

Question

I have some columns in mysqli that I'm reading from PHP. It's fetching and echoing perfectly.

$results = mysqli_fetch_assoc(mysqli_query($conn, $querystring));
echo json_encode($results);

//$results = {"title":"Sea Shells","location":"./Sea Shells.txt","type":"text"}

however, javascript/jquery then reads the echo as a string:

var contentarr = [];
(ajax magic here, success: function(results){
    contentarr = results;
});
contentarr[0] = {
contentarr[1] = "

how could I directly read an associative array from PHP and map it to an associative array in Javascript? Jquery is the only library I'm using.

Answer 1

Change contentarr = results; To contentarr = JSON.parse(results);

https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_parse.asp

This converts to a javascipt object.