Question

I’m working with a PHP program that is running on multiple servers and producing slightly different strings from two of the servers.

**Server 1 Request Data:**

a:10:{s:9:"locale";s:5:"en_US","url";s:18:"https://testingurl.com/index.php";}

**Server 2 Request Data:**

{"locale":"en_US","url":"https:\/\/testingurl.com\/index.php";}

Both servers are sending the same variables, but in slightly different formats. Server 1 is adding additional information such as a:3: before the request, and Server 2 is omitting those details, but escaping forward slashes.

Question: Are the a:3: , s:9: a common encoding, or something that the server configuration may be adding to the Requests? I’m not familiar with the format, wondering if it’s something common. My goal is to figure out if it’s the PHP program adding the additional information or the server configuration.

Answer 1

It easy

• Server 1 is sending PHP Serialize format
• Server 2 is sending Json Format

Current issue

This serialized format is not valid

a:10:{s:9:"locale";s:5:"en_US","url";s:18:"https://testingurl.com/index.php";}
   ^    ^                               ^
   2    6                              32

This what i think it should look like

$server1 = 'a:2:{s:6:"locale";s:5:"en_US";s:3:"url";s:32:"https://testingurl.com/index.php";}';
var_dump(unserialize($server1));

$server2 = '{"locale":"en_US","url":"https:\/\/testingurl.com\/index.php"}';
var_dump(json_decode($server2, true));

Output

array
  'locale' => string 'en_US' (length=5)
  'url' => string 'https://testingurl.com/index.php' (length=32)