problem with serialize

[jadeddog]

i have an array that i need to pass to another page and store in a table, so i used serialize to try and accomplish this.... here is my code to do this

$ordered = serialize($_POST['ordered']);

when i do an echo "$ordered"; what comes up is: s:5:"Array";

isnt it supposed to be a list of things stored in the array? what am i doing wrong?

[Houdini]

Try this link here from the manual
Unserialize It is the forth statement under Description.

[jadeddog]

the problem is that the serialize isnt storing the array as a series of strings, but rather its still storing it as an array.... so when i do the following code:

$ordered = serialize($_POST['ordered']);
$total = $_POST['total'];
echo "$ordered <br>";
$test = unserialize($ordered);
echo "$test";

i get the following:
s:5:"Array";
Array

the serialize isnt storing the array properly, i just cannot figure out why... does the table record have to be of any certain type (varchar, text etc) to be able to store serialized arrays properly?

[NogDog]

echo "<pre>".print_r($test, TRUE)."</pre>";

[jadeddog]

NogDog wrote:

echo "<pre>".print_r($test, TRUE)."</pre>";

is this a post in the wrong thread by accident? cause if its not, i dont understand at all

[NogDog]

Use print_r() to view the contents of an array. Echoing the array variable will just tell you that it's an array; it won't show you the contents.