Inserting Arrays and Classes into MySQL?

[Havok]

Ahoy there fellas. I'm somewhat new to using MySQL and have tried to avoid storing arrays and classes into my database tables. Mainly because on all of the sites which I've read about how to use PHP inside MySQL they've never mentioned it.

Now my question for all you is: Is it possible to insert arrays and/or classes into a column in my MySQL tables? Naturally, if so then how can I do this?

Thanks in advance.

[Moonglobe]

dunno about classes, i think that [man]serialize[/man] might work for them.

as for array's it's not hard. just do something like:

mysql_query("INSERT INTO table SET array=".implode("|",$inarray);

of course this wont work for multi dimensional arrays, but i could write a function for it....

[rayvd]

serialize is the way to go. Simply serialize your structure (class, array, whatever), which turns it into a string which you can then store to the DB. Pull it out of the DB, unserialize and you have the same object again!

Watch out for slashes... use stripslashes() as necessary if you have the auto magic quotes functions enabled...