JSON array to PHP with FOR LOOP

Here's an example of the input JSON array:

"tags":[{"id":1306,"accountID":4936,"name":"BURTON","group":"Rep","type":0,

"dateCreated":"2015-07-09 19:38:46","dateModified":"2016-04-15 15:02:00",
"isDeleted":false,
"isActive":true,"numOrders":0,"abort":false,
"currentClass":"Tag","_jsonSkipsReadOnly":false}],

Here is the PHP that will pull out the first 3 records of the tags JSON array. I realize that it would be better to create a PHP array for tags instead

foreach ($tagsarray as $tags) {
            for ($i=1; $i<4; $i++) {
             ${'tagid'.$i} = $tags->id;
             ${'tagname'.$i} = $tags->name;
               ${'taggroup'.$i} = $tags->group;
            }
           //echo "tagname1: ".$tagname1."tagname2: ".$tagname2."tagname3: ".$tagname3."
";
            // do nothing after capturing first 3 tags records

          }

foreach ($tagsarray as $tags) {
            $tagid[] = $tags->id;
            $tagname[] = $tags->name;
            $taggroup[] = $tags->group;
          }
$tagid1 = $tagid[0]; $tagname1 = $tagname[0]; $taggroup1 = $taggroup[0];
$tagid2 = $tagid[1]; $tagname2 = $tagname[1]; $taggroup2 = $taggroup[1];
$tagid3 = $tagid[2]; $tagname3 = $tagname[2]; $taggroup3 = $taggroup[2];