PHP and JSON datatype in MySQL
<p>Despite of <a href="https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html" rel="nofollow">recent implementation of JSON datatype to MySQL</a> I can't find any word on it in the related PHP documentation.
My question is: will PHP automatically convert cells of JSON column to the actual values - arrays or literals - or will it provide just json-encoded strings. Like:</p>

<pre><code>$sql_query = "SELECT JSON_ARRAY(1,2,3)";
$result = mysqli_query($sql_query);
$value = mysqli_fetch_row($result)[0];
// what is a $value? Array(1,2,3) or a string "[1,2,3]"
// do I have to use json_decode() to get an actual array here?
</code></pre>

<p>(Don't have MySQL 5.7 at hand right now, so can't check it myself.)</p>