PHPSerializer

This library is a work in progress. Test any builds before phpunit before use., _(*1)

Library for very quick manipulation of large serialized strings,, _(*2)

PHPSerializer was built to improve the efficience of Flatbase, _(*3)

In PHP, if you have a serialized array and you wish to add an item to that array, you'd need to do something like this:, _(*4)

$data = unserialize($serialized);
array_push($data, 'some-new-item');
$serialized = unserialize($data);

What's the problem with this? Well it's extremely inefficient to unserialize that entire array for such a simple operation., _(*5)

If you're unserializing a small array or you're not doing it very often then this is probably fine, but if you're in a heavy load setup there must be a better way., _(*6)

The idea behind PHPSerializer is essentially to parse and stream serialized strings in the most efficient way possible depending on the operation, rather than unserialize()'ing the entire string for every function., _(*7)

The speed benefits can be outstanding. Here's some benchmarking results from early testing versions of PHPSerializer using this approach:, _(*8)

> Beginning benchmarking test for appending new items to a serialized array
> Benchmarking appends by unserialize(), array_push(), and serialize()
> - Performed 2000 appends to a data set of 10000 in 7.004s, with a memory peack of 5.00Mb
> Benchmarking appends PHPSerializer\SerializeArray::append()
> - Performed 2000 appends to a data set of 10000 in 34ms, with a memory peack of 5.25Mb

To re-iterate those results; performing 2,000 array_push() operations on a serialized array with 10,000 items took 7.004s with the traditional method, versus a measly 34ms with PHPSerializer., _(*9)

Another example where huge speed gains can be made is reading the first item from a serialized array. Normally you would need to unserialize() the entire array regardless of how many array elements you're interested in. Let's see what the difference is, _(*10)

> Building control data
> Benchmarking reads using PHPSerializer::first()
> - Read the first item from a data set of 3000000 in 89ms, with a memory peack of 2.23Gb
> Benchmarking reads using unserialize[] 
> - Read the first item from a data set of 3000000 in 1.118s, with a memory peack of 2.23Gb

That's 1250% faster, dropping from 1.118s to just 89ms, _(*11)

Feature wishlist: - Be able to stream from files directly - Appending an item to a serialized array (array_push()) - Retreive a single item from a serialized array by its key - Search for an item in a serialized array by its value (array_search()) - Filter all items in a serialized array (array_filter()) - Strict serialized string validation; unserialize('b:1;ThisWillNotThrowAnError'), _(*12)