Decode

To decode is to transform a piece of data, from a specialized format to a human readable one.

The conversion is lossless, and shall be reverted with an encode operation.

<?php

    // convert an array to a JSON string
    // This is also called 'encoding', and may be decoded
    $array = ['a' => 1];
    $json = json_encode($array);

    $original = json_decode($json);

?>

Documentation

See also PHP: Useful Encoding and decoding Functions You Need to Know.

Related : Encode, Convert