CodeIgniter-Twitter Library

[eluser]alijanah[/eluser]
This may sound stupid but I’m a newbie to API programming but not a PHP or CodeIgniter newbie. I tried this API and have followed as per below :-

This is just an example, not necessarily the search call.

Code:

$this->load->library(’twitter’);
$this->twitter->auth(’user’, ‘pass’);
$timeline = $this->twitter->search(’trends’);
var_dump($timeline);

Now my question is that are all the calls to the API returned as a JSON object array ? Do I have to decode all the calls for the other functions as a JSON object ? Can anybody show some practical examples of a controller with a calls for this API which shows how to decode the JSON and also maybe passing it through the view.
Thanks.