Serialized variables?

[waynew]

Okay, I've been googling high and low for an answer to this. There is plenty of documentation out there for unserialize() etc, but there seems to be nothing out there that actually tells you what a serialized variable is? Anyone know what a serialized variable is? Thanks.

[Wolphie]

It generates a storable representation of a value.

 

http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php

 

Look harder next time. www.php.net

[sasa]

string

[mbeals]

basically, you can't store a complex data structure, like an array in a database or pass it across a socket, so you have to transform it into something 'flat'.  serialize() takes that complex data structure and encodes it into a string that can be decoded by unserialize.

 

To see what it is doing just echo some serialized arrays

 

$array1 = array("1","2","3");
$array2 = array("1"=>"one", "2"=>"two", "3"=>"three");

echo serialize($array1);
echo serialize($array2);