json_decode AND json_encode long integers without losing data

As long as your PHP version can actually handle large integers, meaning if you're running a 64-bit version of PHP ^{(on something other than Windows)}, json_decode has no problem with it:

$json  = '{"foo":9223372036854775807}';
$obj   = json_decode($json);
$json2 = json_encode($obj);

var_dump(PHP_INT_MAX, $obj, $json2);

int(9223372036854775807)
object(stdClass)#1 (1) {
  ["foo"]=>
  int(9223372036854775807)
}
string(27) "{"foo":9223372036854775807}"

If the integer values you need to handle do exceed PHP's PHP_INT_MAX, you simply cannot represent them in PHP native types. So there's no way around the conundrum you have; you cannot use native types to track the correct type, and you cannot substitute other types (e.g. strings instead of integers), because that's ambiguous when encoding back to JSON.

In this case you will have to invent your own mechanism of tracking the correct types for each property and handle such serialisation with a custom encoder/decoder. For example, you'd need to write a custom JSON decoder which can decode to a custom class like new JsonInteger('9223372036854775808'), and your custom encoder would recognise this type and encode it to a JSON 9223372036854775808 value.

There's no such thing built into PHP.