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PHP serialization format
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<h2 id="syntax">Syntax</h2> <p>The syntax generally follows the pattern of one-letter code of the variable type, followed by a colon and the length of the data, followed by the variable value, and ending with a semicolon. For the associative array, the format is <serialised key> ; <serialised value>, repeated for each association/pair in the array. </p> <table><tbody><tr><th>Type</th><th>Serialization examples</th></tr><tr><td>Null</td><td>N;</td></tr><tr><td>Boolean</td><td>b:1;b:0;</td></tr><tr><td>Integer</td><td>i:685230;i:-685230;</td></tr><tr><td>Floating point</td><td>d:685230.15;d:INF;d:-INF;d:NAN;</td></tr><tr><td>String</td><td>s:5:"apple";s:6:"A to Z";</td></tr><tr><td>Associative array</td><td>a:4:{i:0;b:1;i:1;N;i:2;d:-421000000;i:3;s:6:"A to Z";}a:2:{i:42;b:1;s:6:"A to Z";a:3:{i:0;i:1;i:1;i:2;i:2;i:3;}}</td></tr><tr><td>Object</td><td>O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:4:"John";d:3.14;s:4:"Jane";d:2.718;}</td></tr><tr><td>Reference</td><td>a:2:{i:0;s:3:"foo";i:1;R:2;}</td></tr></tbody></table> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li><a href="https://urbanscripts.com/"> PHP Scripts</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php">PHP: Serialize</a></li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>"Serialization". PHP Internals Book. Retrieved 2020-07-05. <a href="http://www.phpinternalsbook.com/php5/classes_objects/serialization.html" target="_blank">http://www.phpinternalsbook.com/php5/classes_objects/serialization.html</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>"PHP: serialize - Manual". PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Retrieved 2020-07-05. <a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php" target="_blank">https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>"Response Writers | Apache Solr Reference Guide 8.5". lucene.apache.org. Retrieved 2020-07-05. <a href="https://lucene.apache.org/solr/guide/8_5/response-writers.html#php-writer" target="_blank">https://lucene.apache.org/solr/guide/8_5/response-writers.html#php-writer</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>