PhpSerialization

Ruby implementation of PHP’s serialization. This is special useful for reading PHP session files.

Serialization examples

Primitive values

  PhpSerialization.dump(10)       # => "i:10;"
  PhpSerialization.dump("Name")   # => "s:4:\"Name\";"
  PhpSerialization.dump(true)     # => "b:1;"
  PhpSerialization.dump(nil)      # => "N;"

Array

  PhpSerialization.dump([true, "foo"]) # => "a:2:{i:0;b:1;i:1;s:3:\"foo\";}"

Hash

  PhpSerialization.dump("name" => "Rodrigo", "age" => 23) # => "a:2:{s:4:\"name\";s:7:\"Rodrigo\";s:3:\"age\";i:23;}"

Object

  class Person
    attr_accessor :name, :age
  end

  person = Person.new
  person.name = "Rodrigo"
  person.age  = 23

  PhpSerialization.dump(person) # => "O:6:\"Person\":2:{s:4:\"name\";s:7:\"Rodrigo\";s:3:\"age\";i:23;}"

Unserialization examples

Primitive values

  PhpSerialization.load('i:10;')       # => 10
  PhpSerialization.load('s:4:"Name";') # => "Name"
  PhpSerialization.load('b:1;')        # => true
  PhpSerialization.load('N;')          # => nil

Array

  PhpSerialization.load('a:2:{i:0;b:1;i:1;s:3:"foo";}') # => [true, "foo"]

Hash

  PhpSerialization.load('a:2:{s:4:"name";s:7:"Rodrigo";s:3:"age";i:23;}') # => {"name" => "Rodrigo", "age" => 23}

Object

  class Person
    attr_accessor :name, :age
  end

  person = PhpSerialization.load('O:6:"Person":2:{s:4:"name";s:7:"Rodrigo";s:3:"age";i:23;}')
  person.name # => "Rodrigo"
  person.age  # => 23

Object without class will map to a Struct

  person = PhpSerialization.load('O:6:"Person":2:{s:4:"name";s:7:"Rodrigo";s:3:"age";i:23;}')
  person.class # => Struct::Person
  person.name  # => "Rodrigo"
  person.age   # => 23

You can also call unserialize() or restore(), they are alias to the load().

Copyright

Copyright © 2009 Rodrigo Kochenburger. See LICENSE for details.