Can’t access serialized data

I must be missing something very simple here but I can’t figure it out. I need to access serialized data which is stored in a database.
In the database the stored value is

a:2:{s:8:"last_tab";s:1:"1";s:11:"footer_text";s:13:"Default Text2";} 

I need to get the ‘Default Text2’.

In my local environment i echoed

get_option( 'tt_options' )['footer_text'] 

and got the value I needed.

The problem arises in my staging environment. There, when I type

get_option( 'tt_options' )['footer_text'] 

the page crashes, although

get_option( 'tt_options' )

works fine.

The only difference I can think of between my local and my staging environment is that the tables in the database use different engines:

Staging environment:
Engine: MyISAM

Local environment:
Engine: InnoDB

By the way, I am using WordPress if that helps.

Anyway, I tried to access the value in several ways shown below. The lines that have been commented cause problem only in my staging environment. What i found interesting is that when i try to access the value from serialized data that is not stored in the database, but in a variable (see below:

echo ($returnValue['footer_text']);

), I get the value I need. Does anyone have any idea of what is causing the problem in order to point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance for your time and guidance.

$returnValue = unserialize('a:2:{s:8:"last_tab";s:1:"1";s:11:"footer_text";s:13:"Default Text2";}');

echo '0:: ';
print_r($returnValue);
echo "<hr>";

echo '1:: ';
echo ($returnValue['footer_text']);
echo "<hr>";

echo '2:: ';
//echo get_option( 'tt_options' )['footer_text'];
echo "<hr>";

echo '3:: ';
var_dump(get_option( 'tt_options' ));
echo "<hr>";

echo '4:: ';
//var_dump(get_option( 'tt_options' )['footer_text']);
echo "<hr>";  

echo '5:: ';
echo get_option( 'tt_options' );
echo "<hr>";

echo '6:: ';
print_r(get_option( 'tt_options' ));
echo "<hr>";

echo '7:: ';
foreach(get_option( 'tt_options' ) as $key => $value) {
    echo $key.' : ';
    echo $value."<br>";
}

The results I get from the previous code are shown below:

0:: Array ( [last_tab] => 1 [footer_text] => Default Text2 )
1:: Default Text2
2:: Default Text2
3::
array (size=2)
  'last_tab' => string '1' (length=1)
  'footer_text' => string 'Default Text2' (length=13)
4::
string 'Default Text2' (length=13)
5:: Array
6:: Array ( [last_tab] => 1 [footer_text] => Default Text2 )
7:: last_tab : 1
footer_text : Default Text2

Revision 1:

Yes @Kenney I am running different versions of php. Thank you for pointing it out. I didn’t know what you just mentioned about the syntax in older versions of PHP.
The versions are:

local environment: 5.5.12

staging environment: 5.3.29

So, in my situation, if I can’t control the php version which is installed, the only way to access the value is by using a foreach statement?

Regarding the collation and charset, I run the following query at the database

SHOW CREATE TABLE  `wp_options`

and got in both environments:

DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

I also checked my wp-config.php files and what I found was:

staging environment:

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8mb4');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

local environment:

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Revision 2:

Thanks a lot @Kenney ! That was helpful! Indeed there was a syntax error:

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' in footer.php on line 66

which was produced for the reason you previously stated.

To sum up for helping another person that might end up at this thread, using

echo get_option( 'tt_options' )['footer_text'];

with an older PHP version that 5.4.0 might not work, but

$temp = get_option( 'tt_options' );
echo $temp['footer_text'];

does.

As of PHP 5.4 you can also use the short array syntax, which replaces
array() with [].

Reference:
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php