Serialize and Unserialize SimpleXML in php

Serialize is useful for storing or passing PHP values around without losing type and structure.
But if you want to serialize a SimpleXml object, you will have some problem on unserialize with the error “Warning: unserialize() [function.unserialize]: Node no longer exists in DIRECTORY/FILE.php on line X”.
So I found some solutions on the web and in the php documentation like this one : http://theserverpages.com/php/manual/en/ref.simplexml.php#52761

Replacing SimpleXMLObject with stdClass is a good idea but in this solution we loose all of attributes, and how can we make simplexml->xpath after ?

So I’ find one solution that give me a SimpleXMLObject on unserialize… I have a specific serialize function which detect the type of element to serialize. There is a specific treatement for SimpleXMLObject.

Just check the code :

$xmlfile = simplexml_load_file("projets.xml");
$xmlser = serializemmp($xmlfile);
$xmlunser = unserializemmp($xmlser);
print_r($xmlunser);
The specific serialize function. If we have a SimpleXMLObject, I make a asXML() which give a string representation more easy to store
function serializemmp($toserialize){
if(is_a($toserialize, “SimpleXMLElement”)){
$stdClass = new stdClass();
$stdClass->type = get_class($toserialize);
$stdClass->data = $toserialize->asXml();
}
return serialize($stdClass);
}
In the specific serialized object we store the type of object that we have before the transformation. So if we have a SimpleXMLObject we just make a simplexml_load_string on obj->data.

function unserializemmp($tounserialize){
$tounserialize = unserialize($tounserialize);
if(is_a($tounserialize, “stdClass”)){
if($tounserialize->type == “SimpleXMLElement”){
$tounserialize = simplexml_load_string($tounserialize->data);
}
}
return $tounserialize;
}

I don’t know if this is really a good solution to serialize xml objects, but this is way where we can always access to the functionnality of SimpleXML

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Serialize and Unserialize SimpleXML in php,” an entry on Make me pulse - Making a better life for web developer since 2006

Published:
09.27.07 / 11pm
Category:
Php