Retrieving a message from a cryptocurrency daemon

Question

The objective of this piece of code is to get a message from a cryptocurrency daemon through RPC and extract the transactions object to pass it to the view. Is there a simpler / less ugly way of doing this?

$transaction_pool = json_decode($rpc->getTransactionPool(), false);

if(isset($transaction_pool->transactions)){
    $transaction_pool = $transaction_pool->transactions;
}else{
    $transaction_pool = (object)NULL;
}

View partial:

@forelse ($transaction_pool as $transaction)
<?php $transaction_json = json_decode($transaction->tx_json); ?>
    <div class="row show-grid top-row">
        <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-12 col-md-7">{{ $transaction->id_hash }}</div>
        <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-7 col-md-5 pull-right">
        @if ($transaction_json->version == 2)
            <div class="col-xs-7 col-md-6"><i class="fa fa-envelope-o"></i>&nbsp;confidential</div>
        @else
            <div class="col-xs-7 col-md-6">@coin($transaction_json->amount)</div>
        @endif
            <div class="col-xs-5 col-md-6">@coin($transaction->fee)</div>
        </div>
    </div>
    @empty
    <div class="row show-grid top-row">
        <div class="col-xs-12">No transactions</div>
    </div>
@endforelse

<div class="panel-heading large">
    Transactions ({{ count($transaction_pool) }})
</div>

Answer 1

I don't get the point where you cast null to object.

I'm not sure what are you trying to achive, but you can always make if 'less ugly'.

$transcations_pool = json_decode($rpc->getTransactionPool(), false);   
$transactions_pool = isset($transactions_pool->transactions) ? 
                         $transaction_pool->transactions : 
                         (object) null;

Also i would move div .show-grid to separate file and load it like this:

@include('path/to/file', [ 'transaction_json' => json_decode($transaction->tx_json) ])

Or you can implement special method like $transaction->decodeTxJson() to handle this decoding in $transaction class.