PHP serialization format

The PHP serialization format is the serialization format used by the PHP programming language. The format can serialize PHP's primitive and compound types, and also properly serializes references.[1] The format was first introduced in PHP 4.[2]

In addition to PHP, the format is also used by some third-party applications that are often integrated with PHP applications, for example by Lucene/Solr.[3]

Syntax

The syntax generally follows the pattern of one-letter code of the variable type, followed by a colon, followed by the variable value, followed by a semicolon.

Type Serialization examples
Null N;
Boolean b:1;
b:0;
Integer i:685230;
i:-685230;
Floating point d:685230.15;
d:INF;
d:-INF;
d:NAN;
String s:6:"A to Z";
Associative array a:4:{i:0;b:1;i:1;N;i:2;d:-421000000;i:3;s:6:"A to Z";}
a:2:{i:42;b:1;s:6:"A to Z";a:3:{i:0;i:1;i:1;i:2;i:2;i:3;}}
Object O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:4:"John";d:3.14;s:4:"Jane";d:2.718;}
gollark: > basic reading comprehension: surprisingly uncommonIndeed. People often just treat information related to computers or general technical stuff they don't know much about as utterly unfathomable, when it... isn't.
gollark: Servers generally ship in convenient rackable form factors, as do some network switches and stuff.
gollark: And other datacentre hardware.
gollark: Racks are just a standard way to mount lots of servers densely.
gollark: TL;DR there are very sophisticated automatic systems trying to take any available money.

References
  1. "Serialization". PHP Internals Book. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  2. "PHP: serialize - Manual". PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  3. "Response Writers | Apache Solr Reference Guide 8.5". lucene.apache.org. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.