serialize a large array in PHP?

Question

I am curious, is there a size limit on serialize in PHP. Would it be possible to serialize an array with 5,000 keys and values so it can be stored into a cache?

I am

Answer 1

There is no limit, but remember that serialization and unserialization has a cost.

Unserialization is exteremely costly.

A less costly way of caching that data would be via var_export() as such (since PHP 5.1.0, it works on objects):

$largeArray = array(1,2,3,'hello'=>'world',4);

file_put_contents('cache.php', "

You can then simply retrieve the array by doing the following:

$largeArray = include('cache.php');

Resources are usually not cache-able.

Unfortunately, if you have circular references in your array, you'll need to use serialize().