CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdatabasearraysserialization
David Weng
David Weng

Reputation: 4235

PHP Array Serialization

I'm working on a system that stores an array of objects in the db in a certain way.

Like this:

key             | value
------------------------------
person_0_name   | David
person_0_age    | 32
person_0_job    | Programmer
person_1_name   | Sue
person_1_age    | 26
person_1_job    | Teacher
person_2_name   | Jon
person_2_age    | 40
person_2_job    | Bus Driver

Is this a made up format? I'm wondering if there's an easy way to unserialize this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 89

Answers (3)

Mike Mackintosh
Mike Mackintosh

Reputation: 14237

I think the above are a little conveluted. Depending on how you are accessing the database, the following can easily be adjusted. I used the simplest form of DB connection.

The code:

<?php
$m = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', 'stack');
mysql_select_db('stack');

$q = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM example');

$arr = array();

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($q)){
    $arr[substr($row['key'],0, 8)][substr($row['key'],9)] = $row['value'];
    print_r($arr);
}

The result looks like

Array
(
    [person_0] => Array
    (
        [name] => David
        [age] => 32
        [job] => Programmer
    )

)

Let me know if you have any questions.. In short, the script does a substring on the key field to create array keys based on the person/value.

Enjoy - sEZ

Upvotes: 0

John Conde
John Conde

Reputation: 219814

This is a made up format and clearly done by someone who does not understand deatabase design. You need to make a table for persons with four columns:

  1. id
  2. name
  3. age
  4. job

Then each row should be populated with the data for each person. The first column being a unique ID.

Upvotes: 1

Niet the Dark Absol
Niet the Dark Absol

Reputation: 324640

Well, you'd probably want something like this:

$lines = explode("\n",$data);
$keys = array_shift($lines);
array_shift($lines); // discard the line of dashes
$keylist = Array();
foreach(explode("|",$keys) as $k) {
    $keylist[] = trim($k);
}
$out = Array();
foreach($lines as $line) {
    foreach(explode("|",$line) as $i=>$l) {
        $out[$keylist[$i]] = trim($l);
    }
}
// var_dump($out);

The only downside is that it doesn't keep trailing spaces if there are any in the data - probably not a huge loss.

Upvotes: 1

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