Daniel Convissor wrote: > Hi Cliff: > > On Sun, Oct 22, 2006 at 07:08:11AM -0400, Cliff Hirsch wrote: >> Is serializing/unserializing object/arrays for storage/retrieval in a >> MySQL db truly reliable? > > Depends on what you're doing. We use them to store history. For example, > our update method finds the diff between the old and new data. The diff > contains the old values that are about to be changed, in an associative > array format with column names as the keys. We then serialize that and > store it in a history table along with the record id and table name.
This is a pretty common use of serialized data, and one it is fairly well suited to. That said, I tend to use a simple xml format for storing these kinds of fields, for a few reasons. 1. UTF-8 encoding is easy in XML 2. XML is easy to read/edit manually if needed 3. It's harder to break and when you do, easier to fix Dan _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
