Question

Let’s say I have a variable $data[‘media’];
The problem is the data might be either look like a string so for example

$data['media'] = '1|BlahBLah2|0' 

or it might come in as json encoded string such as

$data['media'] = '{"site_id":"1","string":"BlahBlah2","cool":"0"}';

What is the best way to distinguish if it’s a delimited string or json encoded string?

Answer 1

json_decode will return decoded data or NULL if it’s not json data, so you could use something like this:

$decode = json_decode($data['media']);

if ($decode)
{
    // the data was json encoded, so now we can process it
    $data['media'] = $decode;
}
else // data is a string