PHP - how to create object or asociative array from a JSON string

[sensacion]

I need to create an array or an object from a given string. String is received in a post and is a serialized js object.I get a string like: \[code\]{'id': n, 'propery 1': 'something', 'propery 2': 'something else', etc.} \[/code\]or\[code\]{'whatever': bla bla, etc.} (without the id part). \[/code\]I need to transform that in a php object or array or... something usable.I'm aware that I could extract the substrings or \[code\]explode(': ', $string)\[/code\] but I not really efficient. The received strings are really close to json format (with only 1 or 2 exceptions that I can treat separately).