Parsing serialized Array (Wordpress) - php

Question

I'm using wordpress and one of my meta key values is stored like this:
a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}
I'm trying to figure out the easiest way in PHP to parse this so I can extract "Religion" or really any of the elements in a clean manner.
Hope this makes sense - thanks!!!
Loren

Answer 1

that is a serialized array, use unserialize()
$array = unserialize('a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}');
echo $array[0];

Answer 2

This works in PHP 5.2 and above:
list($thatWord) = unserialize($metaKeyValue);
You then have the string "Religion" in $thatWord.
The string you have:
a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}
Is a serialized array. If you retrieve it from within wordpress, you would get an Array instead of a string. I assume you pull it from the database directly, so you need to unserializeDocs it your own.