Reverse string without strrev

Question

Some time ago during a job interview I got the task to reverse a string in PHP without using strrev.

My first solution was something like this:

Answer 1

public function checkString($str){
    if(!empty($str)){ 
        $i = 0;
        $str_reverse = '';

        while(isset($str[$i])){ 
            $strArr[] = $str[$i];
            $i++;
        }
        for($j = count($strArr); $j>= 0; $j--){ 
            if(isset($strArr[$j])){
                $str_reverse .= $strArr[$j];
            }
        }
        if($str == $str_reverse){ 
            echo 'It is a correct string';
        }else{
            echo 'Invalid string';
        }
    }
    else{
        echo 'string not found.';
    }
}