Zend\Serializer\Adapter

Zend\Serializer adapters create a bridge for different methods of serializing with very little effort.

Every adapter has different pros and cons. In some cases, not every PHP datatype (e.g., objects) can be converted to a string representation. In most such cases, the type will be converted to a similar type that is serializable.

As an example, PHP objects will often be cast to arrays. If this fails, a Zend\Serializer\Exception\ExceptionInterface will be thrown.

The PhpSerialize Adapter

The Zend\Serializer\Adapter\PhpSerialize adapter uses the built-in un/serialize PHP functions, and is a good default adapter choice.

There are no configurable options for this adapter.

The IgBinary Adapter

Igbinary is Open Source Software released by Sulake Dynamoid Oy and since 2011-03-14 moved to PECL maintained by Pierre Joye. It’s a drop-in replacement for the standard PHP serializer. Instead of time and space consuming textual representation, igbinary stores PHP data structures in a compact binary form. Savings are significant when using memcached or similar memory based storages for serialized data.

You need the igbinary PHP extension installed on your system in order to use this adapter.

There are no configurable options for this adapter.

The Wddx Adapter

WDDX (Web Distributed Data eXchange) is a programming-language-, platform-, and transport-neutral data interchange mechanism for passing data between different environments and different computers.

The adapter simply uses the wddx_*() PHP functions. Please read the PHP manual to determine how you may enable them in your PHP installation.

Additionally, the SimpleXML PHP extension is used to check if a returned NULL value from wddx_unserialize() is based on a serialized NULL or on invalid data.

Available options include:

ZendSerializerAdapterWddx Options

Option	Data Type	Default Value	Description
comment	string		An optional comment that appears in the packet header.

The Json Adapter

The JSON adapter provides a bridge to the Zend\Json component. Please read the ZendJson documentation for further information.

Available options include:

ZendSerializerAdapterJson Options

Option	Data Type	Default Value
cycle_check	boolean	false
object_decode_type	Zend\Json\Json::TYPE_*	Zend\Json\Json::TYPE_ARRAY
enable_json_expr_finder	boolean	false

The PythonPickle Adapter

This adapter converts PHP types to a Python Pickle string representation. With it, you can read the serialized data with Python and read Pickled data of Python with PHP.

Available options include:

ZendSerializerAdapterPythonPickle Options

Option	Data Type	Default Value	Description
protocol	integer (0|1|2|3)	0	The Pickle protocol version used on serialize

Datatype merging (PHP to Python Pickle)

PHP Type	Python Pickle Type
NULL	None
boolean	boolean
integer	integer
float	float
string	string
array list	list
array map	dictionary
object	dictionary

Datatype merging (Python Pickle to PHP)

Python Pickle Type	PHP Type
None	NULL
``boolean	boolean
``integer	integer
``long	integer or float or string or Zend\Serializer\Exception\ExceptionInterface
``float	float
``string	string
``bytes	string
unicode string	string UTF-8
list	array list
tuple	array list
dictionary	array map
All other types	Zend\Serializer\Exception\ExceptionInterface

The PhpCode Adapter

The Zend\Serializer\Adapter\PhpCode adapter generates a parsable PHP code representation using var_export(). On restoring, the data will be executed using eval.

There are no configuration options for this adapter.

Warning

Unserializing objects

Objects will be serialized using the __set_state magic method. If the class doesn’t implement this method, a fatal error will occur during execution.

Warning

Uses eval()

The PhpCode adapter utilizes eval() to unserialize. This introduces both a performance and potential security issue as a new process will be executed. Typically, you should use the PhpSerialize adapter unless you require human-readability of the serialized data.