This can be done easily in PHP. The language provides 2 functions which are useful in this case
is_object
can detect if a variable is an object. It returns true if the given variable is an object.
$var = new stdClass(); if(is_object($var)){ echo "Object"; } else { echo "Not an object"; }

is_array
checks whether a variable is an array or not. It returns true if the given variable is an array, otherwise it returns false.
$var = array(0, 1); if (is_array($var)) echo 'This is an array....'; else echo 'This is not an array....';
PHP Readable var_dump is a small tool which can format display of an array or an object. It is not perfect but it can still show a nice output.