How to detect whether a JSON object is a String or an Array in PHP? [duplicate]

Question

When I have an input like below...

{  
     "number":[  
        "+39XXXXXXXX",
        "+34XXXXXXXX",
        "+49XXXXXXXX"
     ],
     "message":"Sample msg..."
}

I handle it with a foreach loop—like so:

foreach ($message->number as $key => $number) {
    ...                                     
}

---

However when I have an input like this:

{  
     "number": "+49XXXXXXXX",
     "message": "Sample msg..."
}

I receive an error, cause there is no array to be looped inside the object.

So what is a good and efficient way to detect for this?

Answer 1

You can check if the var value is array using the is_array function:

if (is_array($message->number) {
    foreach ($message->number as $key => $number) {
        ...                                     
    }
} else {
    ...
}