Does anybody here recognize such a weird data format? I've never seen anything like this

After further inspection it looks like the bastard son of a JSON. It looks like every field is made like this

<type>:<length?>:<value>;

Where <type> can seemingly be either
- a: object
- s: string
- i: integer

<length>, for an object, means how many key-value pairs it contains, whereas for a string it means the amount of characters; the integer field doesn't use this value at all

<value> is, of course, value

I know this is being used by some PHP application, but honestly I can't figure out if this structure comes from a library or it's custom code.

Sounds like a human readable representation of bson or messagepack or something.

I think "a" states for "array" not "object". In any case I don't think is a widespread format. Maybe a proprietary one?

@davide it would stand to reason that "a" means array... but that's very clearly a dictionary. The amount of values it holds is 4, not 8, and that means it's working with key-value pairs

@IntrusionCM beat me to it.

@IHateForALiving
if it's php this would make sense, just unserialize() and it will go back to an array.

If it's not php, Welp. Good luck.

@C0D4 I think it's a neat, nice and lean format.

Types are included and it's pretty straightforward.

Best: It's not XML or untyped as in JSON.

Looks like serialized php to me too

Well, the owner of this site is unserializing my user input.

And oh, such bad practice does, it does,
demand, that I... be naughty