API Documentation

Check out Serializable Behavior API Documentation

Abstract

Serializable Behaviour for CakePHP 2.1+

Use it if you want to save and read serialized data into db.

Installation

cd my_cake_app/app
git clone git://github.com/imsamurai/cakephp-serializable-behaviour.git Plugin/Serializable

or if you use git add as submodule:

cd my_cake_app
git submodule add "git://github.com/imsamurai/cakephp-serializable-behaviour.git" "app/Plugin/Serializable"

then add plugin loading in Config/bootstrap.php

CakePlugin::load('Serializable');

Configuration

Write global config if you need to use custom serialization function:

Configure::write('Serializable', array(
  'serialize' => <valid callable>,
  'unserialize' => <valid callable>
));

Attach behaviour to model:

public $actsAs = array(
      'Serializable.Serializable' => array(
        'fields' => <array of field names>,
        'serialize' => <valid callable>, // optional
        'unserialize' => <valid callable> // optional
        'merge' => true // optional
      )
);

By default serialization uses function serialize, unserialization - unserialize Merging is off by default, turning it on will do a recursive merge on existing records so you can add data without replacing the entire serialized object.

Advanced usage

If you want to use serialization with Containable behaviour you must modify your AppModel. For example we have 3 models that extedned AppModel: NewsPopular has many NewsPopularItem NewsPopularItem belongs to Article

NewsPopularItem and Article has some serialized fields.

Assume you want to fetch data this way:

$this->NewsPopular->contain(array(
		'NewsPopularItem' => array(
			'Article'
		)
	));
$data = $this->NewsPopular->find('first');

In this case you must add some configuration to AppModel::afterFind. In basic case there must be:

public function afterFind($results, $primary = false) {
	if (!$primary && $this->Behaviors->enabled('Serializable')) {
		return $this->Behaviors->Serializable->afterFind($this, $results, $primary);
	}
	return parent::afterFind($results, $primary);
}

And that's all! Now you have data structure with unserialized fields.