While this can obviously change between versions, the current error codes are as follows:

0 = JSON_ERROR_NONE
1 = JSON_ERROR_DEPTH
2 = JSON_ERROR_STATE_MISMATCH
3 = JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR
4 = JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX
5 = JSON_ERROR_UTF8

I'm only posting these for people who may be trying to understand why specific JSON files are not being decoded. Please do not hard-code these numbers into an error handler routine.

I used this simple script, flicked from StackOverflow to escape from the function failing:

<?php
    function utf8ize($d) {
        if (is_array($d)) {
            foreach ($d as $k => $v) {
                $d[$k] = utf8ize($v);
            }
        } else if (is_string ($d)) {
            return utf8_encode($d);
        }
        return $d;
    }
?>

Cheers,
Praveen Kumar!

when json_decode a empty string, PHP7 will trigger an Syntax error:
<?php
json_decode("");
var_dump(json_last_error(), json_last_error_msg());

// PHP 7
int(4)
string(12) "Syntax error"

//  PHP 5
int(0)
string(8) "No error"

use this code with mb_convert_encoding, you can json_encode some corrupt UTF-8 chars

    function safe_json_encode($value, $options = 0, $depth = 512) {
        $encoded = json_encode($value, $options, $depth);
        if ($encoded === false && $value && json_last_error() == JSON_ERROR_UTF8) {
            $encoded = json_encode(utf8ize($value), $options, $depth);
        }
        return $encoded;
    }

    function utf8ize($mixed) {
        if (is_array($mixed)) {
            foreach ($mixed as $key => $value) {
                $mixed[$key] = utf8ize($value);
            }
        } elseif (is_string($mixed)) {
            return mb_convert_encoding($mixed, "UTF-8", "UTF-8");
        }
        return $mixed;
    }

Just adding this note since I had to code this for the actual values reference.

<?php

echo JSON_ERROR_NONE . ' JSON_ERROR_NONE' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_DEPTH . ' JSON_ERROR_DEPTH' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_STATE_MISMATCH . ' JSON_ERROR_STATE_MISMATCH' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR . ' JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX . ' JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_UTF8 . ' JSON_ERROR_UTF8' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_RECURSION . ' JSON_ERROR_RECURSION' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_INF_OR_NAN . ' JSON_ERROR_INF_OR_NAN' . '<br />';
echo JSON_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE . ' JSON_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE' . '<br />';

/*
The above outputs :
0 JSON_ERROR_NONE
1 JSON_ERROR_DEPTH
2 JSON_ERROR_STATE_MISMATCH
3 JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR
4 JSON_ERROR_SYNTAX
5 JSON_ERROR_UTF8
6 JSON_ERROR_RECURSION
7 JSON_ERROR_INF_OR_NAN
8 JSON_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE
*/

?>

This is a quite simple and functional trick to validate JSON's strings.

<?php

    function json_validate($string) {
        if (is_string($string)) {
            @json_decode($string);
            return (json_last_error() === JSON_ERROR_NONE);
        }
        return false;
    }
    echo (json_validate('{"test": "valid JSON"}')  ? "It's a JSON" : "NOT is a JSON"); // prints 'It's a JSON'
    echo (json_validate('{test: valid JSON}')  ? "It's a JSON" : "NOT is a JSON"); // prints 'NOT is a JSON' due to missing quotes
    echo (json_validate(array())  ? "It's a JSON" : "NOT is a JSON"); // prints 'NOT is a JSON' due to a non-string argument
?>

Cheers

Protected and private properties are ignored,
when json_encoding a class instance.
The snippet

<?php
class Example
{
    private   $privateprop   = "private property";
    protected $protectedprop = "protected property";
    public    $publicprop    = "public property";
}
echo json_encode(new Example);
?>

only returns 
{"publicprop":"public property"}

here is a small updated version of utf8ize that has the following addition : 
* It uses iconv instead of utf8_encode for potentially better result.
* It adds the support of objects variable 
* It also update array key value (in a case I met I had to utf8ize the key as well as those were generated from a user input value)

Here is the code.

<?php
    function utf8ize($d) {
        if (is_array($d)) {
            foreach ($d as $k => $v) {
                unset($d[$k]);
        $d[utf8ize($k)] = utf8ize($v);
            }
        } else if (is_object($d)) {
        $objVars = get_object_vars($d);
        foreach($objVars as $key => $value) {
        $d->$key = utf8ize($value);
        }        
    } else if (is_string ($d)) {
            return iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-8//IGNORE', utf8_encode($d));
        } 
        return $d;
    }
?>