for some unknown reason to me, the code in the function populateObjects:
if (!empty($item->my_json_object))
{
$registry = new JRegistry;
$registry->loadString($item->my_json_object);
$item->my_json_object = new JObject($registry->toObject());
}
return an empty object when I call directly the $model->getItem()
if I use the simple json_decode, it always perfectly works:
if (!empty($item->my_json_object) AND is_string($item->my_json_object))
{
$item->my_json_object = json_decode($item->my_json_object);
}