Check historical branches in Git, GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. Even if the local deployment files are encoded, the remote repository history usually contains the unencoded source.

Decoded code might not look exactly like the original; variable names might be lost or renamed, making the code harder to read.

: Run the encoded application in a closed, secure staging environment.

Inspect automated server backups, local staging environments, or IDE cache files (such as those in VS Code or PhpStorm) which often store local history.