• 13Nov

    PHP Tutorial 030: To Serialize() or to Unserialize()

    PHP Tutorials

    Well, there are several methods to make arrays, but to save them it is easiest to use serialize. It retains about every aspect of variable. However if you are doing Object Oriented Programming, it does not retain the functions for a class. You can usually use serialize() to safely store your values in a text format that you can restore at a later time. This tutorial demonstrates what it does, and sort of how PHP uses serialize and unserialize.
    This tutorial goes over the following goals:
    Show what Serializing does
    Show what unserializing a serialized string does
    Show how to store and use later
    You can find this tutorial video on youtube here.

    Here are the sources used in this tutorial:
    another.php
    <?php
//Another file that will use Tutorial 30's generated data and display something.
$sdata = file_get_contents("blah.txt");
$data = unserialize($sdata);
foreach($data as $date){
	echo "<br />Johnny ate an apple on the day: ".date("D, d M Y H:i:s e", $date);
}
?>
    blah.txt
    a:10:{i:0;i:1257216564;i:1;i:1257216565;i:2;i:1257216566;i:3;i:1257216567;i:4;i:1257216568;i:5;i:1257216569;i:6;i:1257216570;i:7;i:1257216571;i:8;i:1257216572;i:9;i:1257216573;}
    tut030.php
    <?php
//PHP Tutorial 30 To Serialize, or to Unserialize
$times = array();
for($x = 0; $x < 10; $x++){
	$times[]= time()+$x;
}
file_put_contents("blah.txt",serialize($times));
?>

    Here are all the php functions used in this tutorial:

    array date echo file_get_contents file_put_contents serialize time unserialize

    Posted by Kloplop321 @ 7:07 am

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