Supported Versions: PHP 5 >= 5.2.0, PHP 7, PHP 8, PECL json >= 1.2.0
Decodes a JSON string
<?php json_decode(    string $json,    ?bool $associative = null,    int $depth = 512,    int $flags = 0): mixed
<?php     public static function ifJsonToArray(mixed $data): string|object|array {

        if (is_string($data)) {

            $array = json_decode($data, true);

            $data = is_array($array) ? $array : $data;

        }

        return $data;