JSON vs. Serialized Array in database [closed]

Answer 1

if youre trying to get around quotes and special characters in your JSON.stringify(obj) ,you can do so in PHP using it's database-specific escaping methods.

<?php
mysql_real_escape_string(htmlspecialchars($value))
?>

you can now store this safely and decode it when you read it back out

Answer 2

Are you using your datas only with PHP ? If yes : arrays, if no : JSON.

Pro Array

• sessions used serialization : I think it's faster than json_encode/decode (not quite sure)
• many functions on arrays in PHP (sorting/merging/...)

Pro JSON

• JSON is know in other languages and web languages
• less verbose in database
• many tools, like XML : JSON SChema

Answer 3

atm, json_encode() works only with UTF-8 encoded data.. therefore, it cannot encode characters such as "ñ", else it returns NULL

Answer 4

Pro JSON:

• The JSON data can be used by many different languages, not just PHP
• JSON data is human readable and writable.
• It takes up less space
• It is faster to encode JSON than to serialize

Pro Serialized Array:

• It is faster do unserialize than to JSON decode

---

As the comments indicate, JSON takes up less space than a serialize array. I also checked whether JSON or Serializing is faster, and surprisingly, it is faster to JSON encode than to Serialize. It is faster to unserialize than to JSON decode though.

This is the script I used to test:

<?php 
function runTime(){
      $mtime = microtime(); 
      $mtime = explode(' ', $mtime); 
      $mtime = $mtime[1] + $mtime[0]; 
      return $mtime; 
}
?> 
<pre>
<?php
$start = runTime();

$ser;

for($i=0; $i<1000; $i++){
    $a = array(a => 1, x => 10);
    $ser = serialize($a);
}
$total = runTime() - $start;
echo "Serializing 1000 times took \t$total seconds";
?>

<?php
$start = runTime();

$json;

for($i=0; $i<1000; $i++){
    $a = array(a => 1, x => 10);
    $json = json_encode($a);
}
$total = runTime() - $start;
echo "JSON encoding 1000 times took \t$total seconds";
?>

<?php
$start = runTime();

$ser;

for($i=0; $i<1000; $i++){
    $a = unserialize($ser);
}
$total = runTime() - $start;
echo "Unserializing 1000 times took \t$total seconds";
?>

<?php
$start = runTime();

$json;

for($i=0; $i<1000; $i++){
    $a = json_decode($json);
}
$total = runTime() - $start;
echo "JSON decoding 1000 times took \t$total seconds";
?>
</pre>

Answer 5

There was a lot of such questions on SO.

Preferred method to store PHP arrays (json_encode vs serialize)

In short: JSON is better for simple data, but it doesn't distinguish difference between object and associative array. Serialized data are bigger.

Answer 6

JSON beats serialization as most answers already pointed out. I think the biggest advantage is its platform independency. You might have other applications communicate with you database and they might not have anything to do with php.

But both solutions violate database normalization. You database will not even be in first normal form so you cannot take advantage of any database feature like, say, searching. A better approach is to use object relational mapping. There are good libraries out there - consider for example doctrine ORM.