Re: array field type

Myron Turner wrote: > Tony Marston wrote: >> "Sancar Saran" <sancar.saran@evodot.com> wrote in message >> news:200703050015.50252.sancar.saran@evodot.com... >> >>> On Sunday 04 March 2007 23:04, Sancar Saran wrote: >>> >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> I want to know is there any db server around there for store php arrays >>>> natively. >>>> >>>> Regards >>>> >>>> Sancar >>>> >>> Thanks for responses, it seems I have to give more info about situation. >>> >>> In my current project, we had tons of arrays. They are very deep and >>> unpredictable nested arrays. >>> >>> Currently we are using serialize/unserialize and it seems it comes >>> with own >>> cpu cost. Xdebug shows some serializing cost blips. Sure it was not >>> SO BIG >>> deal (for now of course). >>> >>> My db expertise covers a bit mysql and mysql does not have any array >>> type >>> field (enum just so simple). >>> >> >> Wrong! Take a look at the SET datatype >> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/set.html. This >> allows you to >> have an array of values in a single field, and the user can select any >> number of them. >> >> > It might be worth looking at wddx. I can't speak about the cpu cost for > large numbers of arrays, but it's mechanism is simple. It saves data > types as XML strings, which can be written using > **wddx_serialize_vars()* <cid:part1.05070903.01090402@shaw.ca> *and read > using **wddx_deserialize()* <cid:part2.08060209.04020008@shaw.ca>. WDDX is kind of dicey, it doesn't handle a lot of the data types correctly. About a year an a half ago, I tried to use it as a serializer and it really confused the datatypes in PHP. If you are doing something simple, it will probably work, but I wouldn't count on it. I have an extension to PHP that could work for you. Take a look at XMLDBX at http://www.mohawksoft.org. You'll need to get it from CVS. Put it in the "ext" directory and run ./buildconf.sh --force, then configure with --with-xmldbx It started out as a fix to wddx, but essentially became a rewrite. I've been using it on a few sites for over a year now.