Help with Serializing Objects

[nathj]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a new system and have built a number of objects for controlling data access user properties etc. I want to pass the object between pages.

The site works in the following way:
Login.php - accesscheck.php - valid credentials? - N - login.php
Login.php - accesscheck.php - valid credentials? - Y - mainpage.php

Mainpage.php will be the only page for the display of data as using AJAX I will alter this page.

When the credentials are passed to accesscheck the dataobect and userobject are instantiated and I would like to pass these on to mainpage.php.

I have read that serialization is the way to do this but I have also read a few things about this that worry me a bit.

For instance I have read that you should not serialize an object if it references itself. My objects do that using $this->propertyname.

Also the user object has an instance of the dataobject on it. So perhaps I only need to pass one of them over I don't know.

I have read a lot about this and ended up confused. So I thought I would ask for some friendly advice.

Thanks in advacne
nathj

[pbmods]

Heya, Nathj.

There is nothing inherently bad about serializing objects. The only bad stuff comes into play when the serialized object is accessible from the client side.

The solution is to simply store the instance in the $_SESSION. PHP will automatically serialize each object at the end of script execution and unserialize each object when you call session_start().

[nathj]

Heya, Nathj.

There is nothing inherently bad about serializing objects. The only bad stuff comes into play when the serialized object is accessible from the client side.

The solution is to simply store the instance in the $_SESSION. PHP will automatically serialize each object at the end of script execution and unserialize each object when you call session_start().

Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure that all my serialized objects are stored in the $_SESSION.

Cheers
nathj