Depends on your priorities.
If performance is your absolute driving characteristic, then by all means use the fastest one. Just make sure you have a full understanding of the differences before you make a choice
- Unlike
serialize()
you need to add extra parameter to keep UTF-8 characters untouched:json_encode($array, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE)
(otherwise it converts UTF-8 characters to Unicode escape sequences). - JSON will have no memory of what the object’s original class was (they are always restored as instances of stdClass).
- You can’t leverage
__sleep()
and__wakeup()
with JSON - By default, only public properties are serialized with JSON. (in
PHP>=5.4
you can implement JsonSerializable to change this behavior). - JSON is more portable
And there’s probably a few other differences I can’t think of at the moment.
A simple speed test to compare the two
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
// Make a big, honkin test array
// You may need to adjust this depth to avoid memory limit errors
$testArray = fillArray(0, 5);
// Time json encoding
$start = microtime(true);
json_encode($testArray);
$jsonTime = microtime(true) - $start;
echo "JSON encoded in $jsonTime seconds\n";
// Time serialization
$start = microtime(true);
serialize($testArray);
$serializeTime = microtime(true) - $start;
echo "PHP serialized in $serializeTime seconds\n";
// Compare them
if ($jsonTime < $serializeTime) {
printf("json_encode() was roughly %01.2f%% faster than serialize()\n", ($serializeTime / $jsonTime - 1) * 100);
}
else if ($serializeTime < $jsonTime ) {
printf("serialize() was roughly %01.2f%% faster than json_encode()\n", ($jsonTime / $serializeTime - 1) * 100);
} else {
echo "Impossible!\n";
}
function fillArray( $depth, $max ) {
static $seed;
if (is_null($seed)) {
$seed = array('a', 2, 'c', 4, 'e', 6, 'g', 8, 'i', 10);
}
if ($depth < $max) {
$node = array();
foreach ($seed as $key) {
$node[$key] = fillArray($depth + 1, $max);
}
return $node;
}
return 'empty';
}