Thanks for the feedback, Gerard. One thing I've learned in this experiment is that once the data is serialized and put into the readBy (TEXT) column, I can't really do any queries that do comparisons on the data stored in that column because of the serialization "markup". Unfortunately, this is a requirement in this particular case. I can hear the collective "Duh!" from everybody out there now ;^) What can I say, I had to learn the hard way. Unless I'm wrong, it looks as if I need to go back to doing implode()/explode() on this data in order to preserve the comparisons I need to do inside other queries. Which I don't mind, I was just hoping serialize()/unserialize() would make life easier. Lesson learned. Thanks, Rich > -----Original Message----- > From: Gerard Samuel [mailto:gsam@trini0.org] > Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 1:39 PM > To: Hutchins, Richard > Cc: php-db@lists.php.net > Subject: Re: Serialize...Unserialize > > > Hutchins, Richard wrote: > > >I have an array of values I want to store in a MySQL db in a > column called > >readBy of type TEXT. I want to take that array and serialize > it then insert > >it into the db. No big deal. When I query the db and get the > value from the > >readBy column, I know I have to unserialize it. Again, no big deal. > > > >My question about all of this is once I unserialize the data from the > >column, can I immediately use the array_push() function to > append additional > >data to the unserialized data? > > > I would imagine because the output of unserialize() is of the array > type. Unless, there was an error unserializing it. > > >Will the unserialized data immediately be > >recognized/treated as an array? > > > Yes. > > >Also, is the TEXT dolumn type an appropriate > >column type to store serialized data or is there another > column type that > >should be used? > > > If you can guarantee that the data doesn't go above 256 > characters, then > a varchar column can be used. > But serialized data can get pretty big, so anticipate for it, > by using > text columns. > > -- > Gerard Samuel > http://www.trini0.org:81/ > http://test1.trini0.org:81/ > > -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
