Check to see if a string is serialized?

by

I’d say, try to unserialize it 😉

Quoting the manual :

In case the passed string is not
unserializeable, FALSE is returned and
E_NOTICE is issued.

So, you have to check if the return value is false or not (with === or !==, to be sure not to have any problem with 0 or null or anything that equals to false, I’d say).

Just beware the notice : you might want/need to use the @ operator.

For instance :

$str="hjkl";
$data = @unserialize($str);
if ($data !== false) {
    echo "ok";
} else {
    echo "not ok";
}

Will get you :

not ok

EDIT : Oh, and like @Peter said (thanks to him!), you might run into trouble if you are trying to unserialize the representation of a boolean false 🙁

So, checking that your serialized string is not equal to “b:0;” might be helpful too ; something like this should do the trick, I suppose :

$data = @unserialize($str);
if ($str === 'b:0;' || $data !== false) {
    echo "ok";
} else {
    echo "not ok";
}

testing that special case before trying to unserialize would be an optimization — but probably not that usefull, if you don’t often have a false serialized value.

More Related Contents:

  1. Bug unserialize data PHP doesnt work
  2. Preferred method to store PHP arrays (json_encode vs serialize)
  3. How to saveHTML of DOMDocument without HTML wrapper?
  4. How to repair a serialized string which has been corrupted by an incorrect byte count length?
  5. how to do file upload using jquery serialization
  6. What kind of string is this? How do I unserialize this string? [duplicate]
  7. Form submit with AJAX passing form data to PHP without page refresh [duplicate]
  8. How do I PHP-unserialize a jQuery-serialized form?
  9. Serializing and submitting a form with jQuery and PHP
  10. Exception: Serialization of ‘Closure’ is not allowed
  11. Print array to a file
  12. PHP unserialize fails with non-encoded characters?
  13. Structure of a Serialized PHP string
  14. Storing arrays in the database
  15. Convert PHP array string into an array
  16. JSON vs. Serialized Array in database [closed]
  17. How do i search from serialize field in mysql database?
  18. The best way passing value from jQuery to PHP
  19. how to set progress bar in file uploading using jquery? [closed]
  20. Writing PHP functions that has many parameters/modifiers [closed]
  21. Tagging systems [closed]
  22. How do I compare two DateTime objects in PHP 5.2.8?
  23. HTML/PHP – Form – Input as array
  24. Check whether the string is a unix timestamp
  25. How to pass jQuery variables to PHP variable?
  26. format xml string
  27. PHP: add seconds to a date
  28. PHP sending variables to file_get_contents()
  29. How can I connect to a Tor hidden service using cURL in PHP?
  30. Laravel / Intervention Image Class – class not found

Leave a Comment