Thanks for the feedback, Gerard. One thing I've learned in this experiment
is that once the data is serialized and put into the readBy (TEXT) column, I
can't really do any queries that do comparisons on the data stored in that
column because of the serialization "markup". Unfortunately, this is a
requirement in this particular case.
I can hear the collective "Duh!" from everybody out there now ;^) What can I
say, I had to learn the hard way.
Unless I'm wrong, it looks as if I need to go back to doing
implode()/explode() on this data in order to preserve the comparisons I need
to do inside other queries. Which I don't mind, I was just hoping
serialize()/unserialize() would make life easier.
Lesson learned.
Thanks,
Rich
> -Original Message-
> From: Gerard Samuel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 1:39 PM
> To: Hutchins, Richard
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] Serialize...Unserialize
>
>
> Hutchins, Richard wrote:
>
> >I have an array of values I want to store in a MySQL db in a
> column called
> >readBy of type TEXT. I want to take that array and serialize
> it then insert
> >it into the db. No big deal. When I query the db and get the
> value from the
> >readBy column, I know I have to unserialize it. Again, no big deal.
> >
> >My question about all of this is once I unserialize the data from the
> >column, can I immediately use the array_push() function to
> append additional
> >data to the unserialized data?
> >
> I would imagine because the output of unserialize() is of the array
> type. Unless, there was an error unserializing it.
>
> >Will the unserialized data immediately be
> >recognized/treated as an array?
> >
> Yes.
>
> >Also, is the TEXT dolumn type an appropriate
> >column type to store serialized data or is there another
> column type that
> >should be used?
> >
> If you can guarantee that the data doesn't go above 256
> characters, then
> a varchar column can be used.
> But serialized data can get pretty big, so anticipate for it,
> by using
> text columns.
>
> --
> Gerard Samuel
> http://www.trini0.org:81/
> http://test1.trini0.org:81/
>
>
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