Python to PHP | String to Multidimensional Json Object To Array - php

Question

I have a python script which returns an object as string. I call this python script with php and then print out the result with var_dump(json_decode($result)) and get this (this it the right object I want so my python code works properly I guess):
string(467) "{"userData": {"geburtsdatum": "PMS_2018-01-01", "anrede": "PMS_Herr", "ID": "1", "nachname": "PMS_Nachname1", "Test": {"tel": "PMS_Tel1", "postalOptIn": 0, "postal": "S3_Postal1", "email": "PMS_EMail1"}, "vorname": "PMS_Vorname1" }} "
So as you can see its a string on php side.
But how can I convert it to an object now and the create a multidimensional array from it in php?
If you need more information pls ask Ill add it.
I tried:
json_decode($result, true);
json_decode($result);
$response = (array) $result;
all I get is an Array with 1 Index and the whole Object as Value in it.
The Object gets generated like this on python side:
for message in consumer:
if message.key == str.encode(sys.argv[1]):
returnValue = message.value #this here is an byte obj from external system
consumer.close()
print(returnValue.decode("latin-1"))
Edit 2 and Solution
After long search I found out that the service I'm using (3d Party) returns the result from the python script with json_encode(). I removed that and now this code works:
$array = json_decode($response, TRUE);
return var_dump($array);

Answer 1

Since it is a string you can decode it like this:
$string = '{"userData": {"geburtsdatum": "PMS_2018-01-01", "anrede": "PMS_Herr", "ID": "1", "nachname": "PMS_Nachname1", "Test": {"tel": "PMS_Tel1", "postalOptIn": 0, "postal": "S3_Postal1", "email": "PMS_EMail1"}, "vorname": "PMS_Vorname1" }}';
print_r(json_decode($string, true));
Which returns an array:
Array
(
[userData] => Array
(
[geburtsdatum] => PMS_2018-01-01
[anrede] => PMS_Herr
[ID] => 1
[nachname] => PMS_Nachname1
[Test] => Array
(
[tel] => PMS_Tel1
[postalOptIn] => 0
[postal] => S3_Postal1
[email] => PMS_EMail1
)
[vorname] => PMS_Vorname1
)
)