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Request #34593 Unintuitive serialization for inherited objects.
Submitted: 2005-09-22 07:00 UTC Modified: 2005-09-22 21:11 UTC
From: ectsue at gmail dot com Assigned:
Status: Closed Package: Feature/Change Request
PHP Version: 5.0.* OS: *
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
 [2005-09-22 07:00 UTC] ectsue at gmail dot com
Description:
------------
I believe that the way serialization works for objects 
doesn't make sense.  I have a subclass whose superclass 
contains a private member variable.  Upon serialization, I 
cannot get the private member variable to serialize for the 
subclass (except by using a "NUL class-name NUL member-name" 
string in __sleep()).

Imho, subclasses shouldn't have to know what parts of their 
parent classes to serialize.  I can think of two possible 
solutions to this problem:

1. Have serialize() walk the inheritance tree for the object 
it is serializing.

2. Have some method that will be able to take the output 
from parent::__sleep() and modify it so that it can be 
passed back from the __sleep() method of the subclass so 
that private member variables in the parent can be 
serialized.  (The function I have in mind would do the NUL 
class-name NUL member-name transformation).

Reproduce code:
---------------
class A {
  private $a;
  public function __sleep() { return array('a'); }
  public function getA() { return $this->a; }
  public function setA($a) { $this->a = $a; }
}

class B extends A {
}

$b = new B();
$b->setA(10);
$bSerialized = serialize($b);
$bUnserialized = unserialize($bSerialized);
var_dump($b);
var_dump($bUnserialized);

Expected result:
----------------
object(B)#1 (1) {
  ["a:private"]=>
  int(10)
}
object(B)#1 (1) {
  ["a:private"]=>
  int(10)
}

Actual result:
--------------
object(B)#1 (1) {
  ["a:private"]=>
  int(10)
}
object(B)#2 (2) {
  ["a:private"]=>
  NULL
  ["a"]=>
  NULL
}


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 [2005-09-22 10:45 UTC] helly@php.net
This bug has been fixed in CVS.

Snapshots of the sources are packaged every three hours; this change
will be in the next snapshot. You can grab the snapshot at
http://snaps.php.net/.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

Have a look at interface serializable in 5.1
 [2005-09-22 10:45 UTC] tony2001@php.net
This code (with __sleep() removed) works perfecty fine:

<?php
class A {
  private $a;
  public function getA() { return $this->a; }
  public function setA($a) { $this->a = $a; }
}

class B extends A {
}

$b = new B();
$b->setA(10);
$bSerialized = serialize($b);
$bUnserialized = unserialize($bSerialized);
var_dump($b);
var_dump($bUnserialized);
?>

Is this what you need?
 [2005-09-22 21:10 UTC] ectsue at gmail dot com
tony: In the project that I ran into this problem, I use the 
__sleep method to return only a subset of the member variables 
of the class.  An object of this class can get to be rather 
large and I do not need to serialize everything.  This class 
is occasionally used as a superclass for other classes (this 
is where I ran into the problem).  So, I do need that __sleep 
function.
 [2005-09-22 21:11 UTC] ectsue at gmail dot com
helly: Where can I find documentation about the serializable 
interface?  I tried a whole site search on php.net and 
couldn't find anything of interest.
 
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