Is it a JSON string? Get array in PHP - php

Question

I import data from WordPress. It is a WebDirectory 2.0 that saves the data as a "strange" string in a database.
Example:
s:95:"a:2:{s:3:"url";s:39:"http://www.google.com/";s:4:"text";s:13:"Website";}";
I have tried json_decode() and unserialize(). Both do not work. They return the string as it is. I can see, this is an array with two values, but how this can be parsed in PHP? In what format this string can be?

Answer 1

If you have this:
echo serialize(serialize(['url'=>'http://www.google.com/','text'=>'Website']));
The output will be
s:71:"a:2:{s:3:"url";s:22:"http://www.google.com/";s:4:"text";s:7:"Website";}";
But what you have is
s:95:"a:2:{s:3:"url";s:39:"http://www.google.com/";s:4:"text";s:13:"Website";}";
Which is different. See, s:95 != s:71, among other elements.
Or this is not a real data or by some reason it's generating extra chars, and causing the problem. I would check how the encoding from both PHP and database to see if all matches.